I built you because at the time I thought it would be amusing, giving you a name, a voice, a soul. Sculpting you from head to toe learning every curve and dip of your body. For a time it was interesting, I must admit. For a moment you almost seemed alive. I remember how your brow would crease when you would ask a question and the song you would hum as you watched outside. It was the song I taught you, remember my doll?
Little doll little doll
The mean little god has poisoned you lips
Stolen your voice
If you dream you will kill
If you don’t you will die
Little doll little doll
There is nothing to decide

Oh how you loved that song, humming away all hours of the day and night. I caught you singing it once or twice, heard your tinny voice rising like the whine of a hummingbird. You never sang when you knew I was there though. You much preferred to flutter around my periphery, like so many birds. You laughed like one too, a high chirping sound that you made whenever you found something funny. Yes for a moment you were everything I wanted you to be, maybe if things had continued I could have loved you. Maybe I had loved you, once.

I don’t quite know why you began to bore me. Or why you began to wind down. Why your mind slowed and began to wander. How you would stutter and stop like a machine in need of fixing. You didn’t seem to notice; you would start up again and move around as if you had never stopped. You would stare out into space sometimes your eyes blank and glassy. At those moments I could almost feel your life slipping away, your energy failing you. Soon you began to get up later and later, you stopped more, surely you knew the end was coming, though I never asked. The worse you got, the more I convinced myself that I was no longer interested in you. That you had become mundane and boring. I tuned out your humming, you know. Pretended I didn’t notice you struggle to keep it going or notice the sudden pauses that came when you were trying to remember the tune, convinced myself that I didn’t miss it when you could no longer muster the energy to hum.

And one day you simply stopped.

There was no crash, there was no sudden shift or a sense of loss. You simply stopped moving. You had stuttered and stopped, and never started again. I can’t figure out how to fix you, nor can I muster the will to. It would be like summoning the dead. Your gone, I wish I missed you but I don’t. I am the same as always looking for new ways to amuse myself. I’ve made another doll, though she shows no interest in humming and says nothing about the song, she reminds me a bit of you. She likes to flitter around like you did. Sometimes I catch her watching me and a gentle blush comes to her cheeks. I pretend not to notice but I do find it amusing.
Good-bye little doll