The Cloth Doll And The Weeping Wallow(Recitation To Sorrow) Poem by Katerina Val

She straddled over the lake
as she approached the only existing living hell
as she approached the lonely
she opened her violet eyes
eyes made of three buttons of a dress
lace dress
beauty
half-burnt dress
I can inhale the smell
of seared fabric
and my soul with sorrowful compassion can follow
the threadbare fringes as they creep painfully and woefully
across her skin
and across the ground
where she leaned
but refused to kiss

I can inhale the sadness
emitting through her skin
I can repel the darkness
but she said it is the only way
she needs, to see
the only way she needs
to breathe

"I can see. And I can breathe. Through darkness.
As they are blind. And breathless. Before the light."

Enigmatic contraction of her muscles
around her smile
around her cloth lips
when they slowly open
to utter a cry

and I can look inside her third eye
where I can lay and cry
inside her white third eye
that remains closed
closely-guarded eye
embraced and warm
by a secret lullaby
by a frozen sorriness
by a woebegone loneliness
it is not her
but she has to live
in her third non-violet eye

Within her beauty and her pride
the cloth doll prepares to die
behind a weird smile
die
she prepares to die
among the lonely

She twiddled once before the sadly plaintive weeping wallow
with her girlish legs
like sticks
she twiddled
once
twice
in front of the weeping tree
"dance with me"
and she touched her dress like a noble lady
with hands soft and skinny, inconsolable and gently graceful
considerate and lonely
hands
gentle and frozen

And the weeping wallow leaned
and gratefully murmured a trite elegy
yet moving like death
yet motionless like death
like death

She stands still
and as she stands still
among the lonely
ice cubes fall off the waving tree
"I am not alone"
said the sallow
"stay with me
or I shall never be."

And the cloth doll caressed the rugose trunk of her desperate friend
and crooned those words
sweetly and carefully
cordially and heartlessly
words that brought the morn
wreathed in the veil of the deathly dusk
"we shall accept solitude
we shall accept death"
and carefully again,
she grinned
and whispered to her desperate enemy
"my dear lonely sallow
as you mournfully dance to the echo of the wind
as you painfully straggle though your waving against the sun
your mind shall not be shallow
but let your heart lay dead as it should be"

And the cloth doll leaned upon the lake
and repeated her purified sin
and as she waved back to the crying tree
to the sniveler
she knew her mind should never again be awake
she shall let it sleep
her mind should sleep
so sleep cloth doll
lean upon your lament
and sleep

Melancholia
and grief
but lean upon your melancholia
and just fall asleep…