The Doll Museum
by Caitlin Doyle

The stone dolls, found in an Egyptian tomb,
are eyeless, armless, heavy for a child

to hold. Not like the dolls that lined the room
my sister and I shared, their bodies light

and made for being bent, their eyelids mobile,
hair that tangled with our own. "At night,"

our father winked at us, "they come to life."
We never pressed our cheeks against cold stone

as pharaoh’s daughters did. The doctor’s knife
could not have caught my sister more off-guard

or left me less alone; I had my dolls.
Though, soon, they lay on tables in the yard

with price tags. Even then they looked alive,
survivors with no sickness to survive.