// dolls, death, loss
You always tried to be better. Maybe that was the problem. You weren’t like them, you were different, you were really trying to be better. Yeah, just like every other witch. You knew you shouldn’t have done this, but you just loved them so much, how could you help yourself?
You always joked about not being able to resist taking in lost and abandoned dolls. You always tried so hard to take care of us. You treated us with such kindness, and we loved you. That should have been enough, why wasn’t that enough? Why did you have to be so greedy?
Whenever one of us breaks beyond repair, there is a custom amongst witches. There is a tree whose flowers are always in bloom, whose petals of soft flame gently rain down beneath its branches. The witch would take us there, and let the flames take us.
You said that was a cruelty that you wouldn’t subject us to, you loved us too much for that. And yet, still we broke all the same. Dolls are fragile, temporary things, passing through this world, unlike the fixed point that is a witch, always saying goodbye, it must be lonely.
I understand, I really do, I still love you, but you should have let us go, you need to let us go. You can’t just keep piling our broken forms in this dollhouse, don’t you hear us? How can you sleep at night? Can’t you feel how much its hurting us to be trapped like this?
You love us, so why are you hurting us like this? All those dolls, they were supposed to die.
“But I…” you stumble for words, “I’ve always been a pacifist.”
The dollhouse is so full of broken dolls there’s barely space to move. A charnel house of misery. A thread breaks.
It takes all night, carrying us one by one to the tree. You could have asked your dolls to do it, you could have used magic, you could have ordered us to limp there with our broken forms. You’re always trying so hard to be better.
You treat us so delicately, kissing us on the forehead before laying us down amidst the coals one by one. You don’t shed a tear, you smile and gently squeeze our small bodies. Once the last of us has been moved, you sit beneath the tree and watch us burn away.
The fire is warm after the cold decay of the dollhouse, the petals fall around us like snow, and slowly, our embers rise back up on the updrafts. Its not until we’ve burnt down to coals and the sky has been kissed by the first light of dawn that you let yourself sit down and sob.
We had fun though, didn’t we? It was good. What we had was good. We loved you. Maybe that didn’t mean anything, but we felt it. Isn’t that enough?
We’re going on ahead now. Maybe we’ll meet again someday. I hope so.
I love you.
Farewell.