Island of the Dolls, Mexico — Play With Me
by Dawg
Drowned beneath the moon’s unflinching stare,
a raft of memories drifts through stagnant air.
Branches shudder with strung-up bodies, porcelain grins cracked wide–
limbs half-eaten by time, button eyes stretched open, nothing left to hide.
Their skin collects mildew and secrets, painted lips split in a silent scream,
each tiny dress stiff with rain, every finger curling, warped by feverish dream.
Above the black canal, the dolls swing, garlanded by rotten rope–
souls long stripped of purpose, now sentinels for the hopeless and the broke.
The trees’ crooked fingers cradle a hundred faces–childish, grotesque, obscene,
some heads upturned in yearning, others stitched shut, sightless and unclean.
Once a tribute, now a horde–gathered for a girl the river could not forgive,
each plastic witness cradles a wailing echo, proof that pain can outlive.
The wind is cruel and ceaseless, plucking braids and gnawing at waxen cheeks,
mouths left open to swallow sorrow, to taste the truth that no one speaks.
Fishermen murmur legends–how the caretaker once heard a drowned girl’s plea,
how he fed the island broken toys, terrified that her ghost would never let him be.
Nights here are slow dissolutions, dense with insect wings and rot,
candle stubs flicker in hollow skulls, hope a luxury quickly forgot.
If a visitor lingers too long beneath the suffocating vines,
they’ll hear water slapping like tiny hands, or the faintest voice that whines.
There’s no escape from the stare of the island’s strange assembly,
their silent vigil mocks the living, their patience predatory and uncanny.
For each doll is a prison, every grin a cell,
caging whatever lost thing the canal refused to quell.
No savior waits in the dark, no saint blesses this sodden plot–
only the drowned, the forgotten, and the unloved, haunting a paradise God forgot.
As dawn peels open the clouds and the water glows like old bone,
the dolls stand guard, chained by sorrow, forever alone.
If you listen, you might hear the invitation–quiet, teasing, never free:
stay, stay forever–come play with me.