The Outgrowing

My only dollhouse
dripped         with dust
for all the years
I owned it.

Instead, my bedframe
bore     the deep grooves
of         playtime roughness,
its rounded
sweet-cream beams
bowing            up from the floor
to form a castle of pillows
and pillared bridges
where         thick-lipped witches
in washcloth cloaks,
loved        doe-eyed princes
doused in        my father’s cologne;

where my fingers

slipped             through
the invisible to touch
gold-paved paths
to         forgotten forests,
and the silver warmth
of stardust       brick
and ballgowns;

where I couldn’t
outgrow           myself.

I’m three months married now,
moved out,      moved on,
and my parents           are repainting
my attic room with
a half-baked buttermilk       hue.

It’s my brother’s          now,
and like I picked          the pale
spring green    they’ll piece away,
this claiming is his      right.

And it’s        okay
that      the soft side
of dawn won’t light
those walls in a
moss-soft glow,
and my bed-frame
is broken         down and
boxed       in a basement
somewhere
because nobody will
buy      its pockmarked
pieces,

but I have to know
where      my dolls went,

because if the dolls     are gone
there is nothing       left      of me
in my        childhood     home
but that            dollhouse.

That        dollhouse.

There is nothing          left of me.

By Paige Winegar Fetzer