The Puppet Master's Love

Day 4 of the 30 Days of Fright

She would not bend.

Not to words,
not to longing,
not to the gifts I placed at her feet
carefully chosen,
tenderly wrapped,
every ribbon a plea.

Others came to me easily.
A look. A nudge.
A whispered truth
they didn’t know they carried.
They’d dance for me
without knowing
their strings were already tied.
But not her.

She stared through me,
Like I was glass.
Like I was small.
Like I was nothing.

So I built her.

Not a copy.
A reflection made perfect
skin like hers, hair like hers,
the same laugh,
but softer,
sweetened by devotion.

She doesn’t argue.
She doesn’t turn away.
She tilts her head when I speak.
She sighs when I sing.

I dressed her in velvet.
Laced her joints with silver wire.
Hung her in the theater of
my private affection,
her strings bound
not to wood,
but to me.

She moves when I will it.
Not too quickly.
Gracefully, like she always
should have.
No resistance.
No distance.

I whisper to her at night
“You see me now, don’t you?”
And in the candlelight,
her glass eyes gleam
like tears.

I tried to bring the real one once.
Asked her to watch the show.
To see herself, finally made
beautiful.

She laughed.
Called me sick.
Called me deluded.
Left before the second act.

The puppet wept for days.
Now she performs for no one but me.
I’ve carved her smile wider,
so it never fades.

Her hands reach for me in sleep.
Her body warms beneath my touch.
I know she feels me.
I know she loves me.

And the real one?
She still walks by the old theater
sometimes.
I see her in the rain,
umbrella tilted,
face turned to the boarded windows.

She hears the music.
The strings creaking in rhythm.
Does She remember the shape
of her soul?
How it danced for me?

She thought it was her own.
She doesn’t know
it never was.

She’ll come back.
They always do.
And when she does,
she’ll see the truth
I built for her.

The love
that cannot rot.
The devotion
that cannot die.

And then
I’ll pull her strings too.

~by Heather Patton / The Verdant Butterfly

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