From this dusty corner on your bookshelf, I've watched you.
When we first met, I remember how your own eyes widened in surprise, in amazement and joy, as you traced each spot on my body, calling out, "She's perfect, Maman! She looks just like I wanted her to look like! A ladybug!" I always did love the sound of your laugh, ringing through the hallways and the empty rooms when no one was home.
With my black button eyes taken from Father's old coat, I've watched the tiny nubs in your mouth grow into pearly teeth that your gums petulantly rejected. Refuse for the tooth fairy to scavenge, leaving silver coins in her hasty retreat to her toothy lair. You cried at the pain of losing part of yourself, and I enfolded your small trembling body with mine of red patchwork scraps and loose cotton filling. "Tikki," you whimpered, and I held you tighter until your sobs subsided. I could protect you from the world, then.
I wish I could hear your laughter now. The darkness that surrounds me dulls my senses. I have lost track of the days I've been here—or has it been months? Years?
Child, all I ever wanted to do was love you. I existed for your smile, your tears, your terms of endearment.
Why did you leave me here? Here, on this shelf, collecting dust, watching you shed tears from far away?
I've watched you grow, child. You shot up four inches one summer (to Maman and Papa's utter delight); they attributed your astonishing growth spurt to the Brussel sprouts from the farmers' market and forced you to eat more, to your disgust. You began to come home at later hours, hair in a sweaty ponytail, wearing muddy cleats and trekking dirt into the house.
You don't play with me anymore.
Maman's makeup that you used to put on me, you now slip into your bag before heading downstairs to breakfast. You now spend hours in the bathroom looking at your reflection, puzzling over the acne that pockmarks your cheeks and forehead, yanking hair back into pigtails with red ribbon you stole from the kitchens. You're perfect the way you are, I try to say, but you don't seem to hear me.
One night, you fling me against the wall. My soft cotton body thumps against painted wood once, a dull sound, and slumps to the ground. My face is pressed against the hardwood floor, but I hear your muffled sobs that you try to stifle with your pillows, and I feel a dull anger towards the boy who made you hurt, the stupid boy with the perfect windswept hair and the cocky grin plastered on the posters hanging in front of her desk.
Who is this Adrien that has usurped my position in your heart?
My soft patchwork body of cotton and wool and scraps of red fabric cannot feel the pain, but it hurts.
The darkness engulfs me, muffling my senses. I cannot see anything out of my button eyes, but I can still see your figure in my mind, as a child shrieking with laughter, red cheeks dimpling; as a young girl with a gap-toothed grin, holding her tooth in her palm for me to see; as an adolescent, red eyed and sniffling, miserable with a broken heart.
It's okay, you don't have to love me.
I'll just have to love you more.