The Mannequin Poem by Paula Glynn

Every night at 8 o'clock the busy shopping centre would close
All the bright neon shop lights would be turned off
All the shop doors would be securely locked
Twelve hours of darkness to behold the shopping centre
The shops seemingly empty of any life
The shops being devoid of hard-working staff and public.

But then incredible magic happened:
The immaculately dressed mannequins would come to vibrant life
They would walk and talk incessantly with fascination
They would wander the empty shopping centre
They would wonder why they were there
They would wonder what was outside the building walls.

And one mannequin in particular would wonder
And would walk around the closed shops in designer shoes
Wondering what real life was like for the humans
While she slept in the daytime as a mannequin
Her bloodless body devoid of being a breathing human
Yet she resembled a woman with her perfect pale limbs.

But - in a sense - she was almost human
But who created her? Made her self-aware?
She had a lot of questions: millions of questions
And needed a lot of answers to satisfy her curiosity
Even asking the other mannequins what they thought
How to escape the walls without being caught.

The mannequins would be living in dazzling dresses
Sexy and seductive skirts, tailored trousers
Blouses, jeans, sweaters, jumpers, cardigans
Every kind of hat, every kind of shoe, every kind of colours
All so the shops could do everything they could do
The public admiring the mannequins in every window view.

It didn't occur to them to give themselves Christian names
They just wandered along, not realizing the mesmerizing magic
They would never stop to ask who created them
Yet one-day a stranger walked into the night-time shopping centre
Telling them the truth: that they were fiction not fact
Telling them they were cursed by a sorcerer to be mannequins.

She would talk to the mysterious stranger asking why she was there
Why she was asleep all day and trapped inside the shops all night
She would ask why she would give people a fright
She would ask how to make herself a new happy life
To live and be human in the imagined outside daylight
To feel the sun on her face and live life to the fullest.

But she felt so real: the truth the stranger did reveal
And the stranger came to shut them down and help them
The stranger came to take away the black magic
The stranger having a worthwhile and genuine agenda
Knowing the mannequins would now be born human
Never again doomed to live inside the shopping centre.

Their self-awareness a test to prepare them for real life
Where they would be free of the shopping centre
They would never remember their past lives
But they would know they were definitely human
They would know their plastic bodies to become skin and bone
And would never be trapped by the shopping centre again.