Listen
Spoken version
A recorded reading of “A Doll in the Wind”. If the player does not load, use the original audio source.
Your slow tone lifts me— a tow-rope over bone— and there we go. Let me stand in the gap between your words, count the quiet to ten. (Out back, a soft hooffall ticks once against brick.) Pinned to your tune, a window doll that turns whenever the door breathes open, I finger the clear threads, testing where my hands end. Your sentences rattle—cutlery skittering across midnight counters; what was a drip becomes a gutter, shoves the cans, floats my plans. You keep me moving when all I want is the wind-shadow by the wall. Then—absurd—you refuse the goat, the one firm thing with hooves in all this weather. I laugh—a cracked note in a rising room. The doll keeps spinning. Somewhere a goat noses a frayed rope, and the knot begins to give.
Alternative version
Slow tone, you’re taking me over, a creeping tide I can’t resist— and so we go. Stop taking me over; let me catch my breath in the silence between your words. A puppet to your tune, a doll spun wild in the wind, I beg for time to come down, to peel away the strings and find what’s left of my own scattered mind. Harsh words flung like arrows through the night, sorrow beguiled, dragging me deeper into the currents of your unraveling tale. You hit me hard, a storm against a sinking ship. A slow stream turns torrent, your efforts flood me afloat, pushing me forward when all I want is to pause in the eye of this hurricane. But then—oh, the absurdity! You deny me a goat! The one thing I asked, a promise as wild as the winds we ride— and still, you withhold it, leaving me stranded in a sea of your whims. What’s left but to laugh— a broken laugh as the waters rise around us? Still, I am a puppet, still, I am a doll— drifting, dreaming of goats and forgotten promises in a storm that never ends.
No published comments yet.