Outlive It

Some get over a bad childhood, they rise to the top of a hill to set fire to the bloody rags of a choiceless youth. The beacon flares, below a forest of wide-eyed animals watch as the sacrifice, now a smoldering fawn, blunders among them, its throat cut and bleeding. Others drag around a blind doll, day by day the macabre manikin grows larger, its face a picture of apathy, for apathy is the ghostly dress of all long dead ballerinas. That hand-stitched doll gets too heavy to bear, and so daily, they must give it away to beggars and saints, The doll is insane, its pain is a robber's key that returns to unlock any cardboard castle, or iron fortress. When the wild dogs come to scavenge among the bones of a childhood, throw them something raw and still wriggling, let them slaver and chew it over, until they sicken, then chop off their gray heads, one by one.