Rag doll

If you stop and listen for a moment,
maybe you’d hear her silent cries
pleading with you or someone
- anyone at all -
to please pick her up, her little body
limp with sadness, crumpled in the corner,
having been discarded,
then forgotten.

She’s so sorry now that she hasn’t been
the perfect doll,
that she had sulked before when you’d
taken her out so very often to play –
she’d thought she’d collapse from wear
      and tear -
but she didn’t.

And she now remembers all the
happy times and all the fun she had;
now is she sad, now does she regret
as she lies limp and crumpled
in the corner where she’d ended up,
waiting and pleading for someone –
anyone – to please pick her up.