Dolls Hospital (Poetry)

It was where they patched them up — mended and restored
the well-loved Charlottes, Daisys and Lucindas —
those raggedy, mop-headed darlings so adored —
each Mary-Jane and little Polly Flinders.

In the window there displayed for all to see —
spare arms and legs, the odd painted china head
with blue unwinking marble eyes stared at me
like a small horror show — a glimpse of the undead.

Repelled yet fascinated, I would peep in —
a timid child and too fanciful by half
and often caught up in my own imagining —
deep unease disguised beneath a nervous laugh.

For what harm could those dismembered limbs convey?
Limp, pink-fabric-bodied babies could not feel
the rips and holes or know what was torn away...
Only their lashes and their glued-on hair was real.

Yet I half-believed my own dolls were alive —
they would talk at night — I’d hear them through my sleep.
It was on my way to school when I was five
I first saw the hospital and felt my young skin creep.

By six years old, less sensitive and grown wise
for the other kids were quick to scoff and scorn
I could glance unmoved at pairs of soulless eyes
and deny I’d ever flinched — old fears stillborn.

At sometime in the fifties that small shop closed.
The business disappeared — maybe due to less demand
for doll repairs. New cheaper plastics one supposed
made toys tougher and more likely to withstand

the rigours of play — that rough and tumble sphere
of childhood tantrums, fallings-out, or the odd fight
when Teddy might sacrifice an arm or ear
or, skirmishing with Golly, lose his button sight.

The Ragdoll Annie days of make do and mend
long-gone. Kids pass toys on — recycle — then update.
Don’t count Cabbage Patch or Barbie as a life-long friend
in need of restoration. Such is their fate.

Hope of rescue now relies on nostalgia’s whim
to retrieve them from Oxfam and take them home.
Some nursing — TLC — the child inside remembering
names and faces — once-dear dolls that were her own.