SONYA THE DOLL WIFE
Yasnaya Polyana is lovely, my life is so quiet, my husband devoted to me; I have no money worries— why am I not perfectly happy? Is it my fault? I am really terribly lonely.
Have I told you about the doll? How when we are alone at night, he turns me into a doll?
Cold-shine face, protruding eyes, painted hair and cheeks? A hard porcelain person
With fused arms and legs and a little porcelain stump to prop me up.
Arms too stiff to hold a tablet, fingers too brittle to use a pen.
My fate has been to serve my husband, the author. Perhaps I ought not to complain; for I have served a man who was worthy of the sacrifice.
Other nights, both of us by candlelight with our diaries and stories, pens leaking, scratching.
I steal looks at his. But does he, when I am in Moscow or with my sister, read mine?
Always? Or never. Secrets creep like vermin along the floor, under doorways,
And into the crevices of my body. They itch beneath the skin.
SONYA THE DOLL WIFE, Susan Terris (CONFLU:X Press, 2008)
SONYA THE DOLL WIFE. This chapbook interweaves quotes from Sonya Tolstoy’s diaries with interpretive poetry of mine. -- S.T
Susan Terris
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