She does not recall
the day we met.
The sky was gray,
the ground was wet.
And there she was,
a small
scant form,
abandoned there
upon the floor.

For only pennies
was she mine,
she could not move,
she could not cry.
The years had left her
high and dry,
my dearest Daisy,
with stormy eyes.

I could not let her
stand alone.
Her weight would tear
her leather bones.
I could not set her
on her back,
or else her eyes
would surely crack.

I’d hate to hear them
shake within
that dome beneath
her cold,
white skin.

She could not tell me
who she’d been,
so long ago
and way back when.
She’d come to me,
and here she’d stay,
from Germany,
so far away.

She did not mold.
She did not shatter.
Or lose her head
in one great clatter.
She’d lost three fingers
over time,
cracked off
by some fool-child’s crime.

“But someone loved me,”
she’d replied,
“The little girl
who’d had my eyes.
Gray as dust,
alive as breath,
and I remain
long past her death.
And as I am
of bisque and wood,
I shall retain
her childhood.”

She was not made
for likes of me,
or anyone
within my tree.
My precious Daisy
is not mine,
I only keep her
by my side.

Those little curls
that frame her face,
her hand-sewn dress
and subtle grace.
Her life,
though she does not
derive,
began in eighteen
eighty-five.

Thuringia,
they called the place,
they made her limbs
and rosy face.
Attached her soul
all wrapped in lace,
a child’s heart,
fresh set to race.

Though years have passed
and time has changed,
my Daisy still remains
the same.
I’m not her girl
and this I know,
but I’ll still love her
head to toe.


© Katherine Steffeter