Paper Dolls

A Poem by ME Barstow

No better than a paper doll living its paper life

I don’t have control,
No, not over my life
Over my emotions
Over my actions
They trample over me
Playing their parts
Dancing to the universal tune

But they spin offstage
And I never touch them,
As much as I reach out,
Fingers trembling
To grasp the gossamer skirts
Ethereal, beautiful

They are who I will never be
The strong, the powerful
And as I sit alone
Alone but for the paper dolls
In their paper houses
In the paper towns
Completely at my mercy

Their vacant expressions
Mindless heads
Finally I am the one in control
I can pull the strings
Disrupting their story book lives
Twisting, manipulating
And they always comply
A vacant smile upon their lips

Oh but the summer romance
The deception and betrayal
I have the power to decide
Who will live
And who will die
Their fate rests in my hands.

Like little soldiers in velvet gowns they march
Lines upon lines
Rows upon rows
Little paper dolls
Their paper houses burning
Their paper towns up in flame
And on they march
Toward power, toward glory
Toward everything ever promised them
Not feeling the strings jerking them along
Solely at my whim

Even as they burn they smile
Do they not know that the world is ending?
Or do they just not care,
The ink dried long ago

They die as they live
Without emotion, without a care
How did I not notice?
I do not have power over the dolls
They have power over me for what do they care
Of the trials of a human?
They are paper
They are without feeling

They are not slaves to their emotion
They are slaves to mine
And so they rule me
They love who I love
Hate who I hate
And through it all, they smile.

The little paper dolls always return
To the little paper houses
In their little paper towns
And I always return to the dance
The pivots, the twirls
Dressed to impress
With no one to see