An Un-Hollow Doll Poem by Yiling Ding

I have
smooth white skin.
Like
a porcelain child,
whose surface
never cracks.

But the china doll
is hollow.

Yet why?
Beneath my
glassy arm, these
veins of
madly pulsing blood.
And the black sorrow,
anger, guilt -
they accumulate
beneath perfection.
Like a secret plague
they eat my heart
away,
away with sad insanity.

I wish I could
cut open the skin
and let out
these crazy feelings.
The guilt is killing me
in all my hidden
vulnerabilities.

Not mutilation, but
a doll's release, her
kind of
silent compensation.

But
a coward's knife
does not cut. I
cannot hurt
perfection.

So I want to
kill the blood from
within, wipe away
the madness by
starving
its source. These
parasitic feelings
feed upon me,
so let me
destroy
my world beneath
my skin.

But I
don't want to die.