I have fancied myself to be a china doll
Alone on a shelf,
And waiting for some caring hand
To open my eyes and clean my dress -
But this at best is merely fancy
And at worst passes into pain.
I was not made to sit lonely
With my brain. Nor am I patient.
To stall with no hope of restarting
Is an unbearable weight, and waiting
With such vague notions of the someday-to-be
Is a foolish self-inflicted fate.

Oh patience, you unremarkable trait.
You have no care when even-handed Fate
Valiantly bestows opportunity.
You sit unmoving and insensate,
And merely wait and wait and wait
For Time's inexorable pendulum to swing
And the boredom of an afternoon to bring
Some visitor's hands, and perhaps some care.
(Though not too much, a doll's only a plaything.)

So no, I am no china doll rejecting -
Stupidly - the passing glances
Of strangers given to wild dances
And children given to clumsy hands,
No, I am no longer a fragile waiting dream
Hoping to visit some loving mind
And fulfill myself in a single eve,
Only to trickle the rest of my nights
As a empty-laughing lifeless little stream.

Enough of this!
I move, I leap, I sit no more.
What lay on the mantle lay now on the floor.
(And perchance the fall has cracked my face
Warding away some unforeseen gentle embrace
But) I shall find my own way into some arms,
Into some wild dance.

My partner will see these cracks and be
Far less afraid to drop me, throw me,
Lift me high and let me fall,
(So I may see the world around me
And - electrified at the sight -
Thank myself for wanting more)
Than a china doll
(Could ever have hoped for.)