The Devil in Dollhouse Lace

The Devil in Dollhouse Lace

The clock was always going to land here
–I watched the hands from the beginning,
and understood there was a destination somewhere in the spinning.
She set the whole arrangement in motion before I arrived at the first scene,
with a patience that precedes whatever I thought the beginning of things had been.

She’s been in this business longer than the longest story I’ve been told about it,
and she keeps the inventory of every participant
and how they went without it.
The dollhouse was assembled for me
–the scale is right, the furniture exact,
down to the quality of the light and the final act.

The last laugh is the one she’s keeping
–I’ve heard it from the room at the end of the hall,
it carries the frequency of something that was settled before I was tall.
I’ve been performing the role she wrote me
for with everything I had,
the devil in dollhouse lace–and she’s never once looked sad.

She dresses the whole scenario in the domestic and the delicate,
and operates behind the lace curtains
and the porcelain and the intimate.
The house is the trap dressed as the only home available
in the season,
and you move in and settle
and start to call it by the word “reason.”

The last laugh belongs to the one who set the clock before the first morning,
the devil in dollhouse lace has been patient through all the turning.
I arrived exactly where the arrangement always planned
for me to be,
the devil in dollhouse lace
–and the last laugh is the address I was given free.