Our Ragdoll Hearts

The Bitter March

        It poured as the little doll dragged herself out of the large dark garbage can. The streetlamps in the distance shone like fireflies in a black hole; the rain beat down against the pavement in flurry of water. She looked back at the house. It’s porch light hit against the brown dark door in golden rays. The white chair in which she had been held in so many times stood tall and great next to the houses painted green side. She longed to run back across the dank grey sidewalk back to the house, to her beautiful Maggie. She hoped that if she was discovered on house’s brown welcome mat, that Maggie would realize it was all a big mistake and would take her back and never let her go. But the little doll knew that was not how this worked, and that Maggie did not want her back.

            A car zoomed through the black night. It’s headlights bore down against the violent storm of water. Its black wheels skidded through the puddles of water. The doll, in a sudden moment of fright, fell off the top of the garbage can where she had been gazing longingly at the green house. She fell through the frigid rain, feeling as if she had been thrown into an oblivion of cold, sadness. She hit the pavement hard. The little dolls landed in a tangle of limbs. Her arms and legs were twisted at odd angles. The fall hurt, but not as much as the missing piece she felt was ripped out of her when Maggie threw her away. The doll picked her stinging form up off the sidewalk and stared at the bleak road before her. She pulled her tiny sock of essentials up higher on her wet wooden shoulder. She stared at the black, puddle-filled road that she would follow till she could go no further with her black dot eyes. The doll looked back one last time at the green house on the corner of the sidewalk, and began her slow treacherous walk down the road. She did not know to where she was going or what came next, so she just walked to wherever the road led her. The doll hoped with all her heart that some miracle would happen, and she would be saved, but the farther she walked, the more she realized that this dream would never happen.

            The little doll walked for hours along the road in the relentless torrent of rain. Her little cloth middle was soaked, along with her fake brown doll hair. The water droplets dripped off her wooden arms in a gush of never-ending water. The baby sock in which Maggie kept all her outfits and things for the adventures they went on was a relentless burden of weight. It dragged behind the little wooden doll, becoming more and more covered with mud as the journey went on. Everything was wet and cold. There was no escape, the doll realized, from the pain, and the wet, and the misery. Still she kept on walking, searching for something, anything, to save her from her desolate fate.

            As the nights turned into days, and rain turned into sun, the doll continued her constant march towards nothing. She finally reached a long high way that seemed to stretch into forever. Cars passed by occasionally interrupting the silence of the countryside on her left and the trees on her right. The little wooden doll kept on walking and walking and walking. Her painted pink cheeks had faded from their natural color with the rain of the night. Her little dot eyes looked straight ahead. She did not think of anything at all, except putting one foot forward, then another, and then another. She knew that she could do this ageless march for years and not give a single care about it. However, the little doll was determined to find something worth searching for. She didn’t know what it was or where it would be, but she knew she would find it eventually.