I keep alien things in my wardrobe

Poetry | Lynn Finger

The unicorn eye in a quartz jar has a gaze that cuts glass,

like flame devours tinsel. 

The saber-tooth tiger skull can inhale a whole arm.

I have striations of scars from it, 

undulating roadmaps no one recognizes.

Don’t touch the translucent butterfly 

that waits on the cabinet floor. It takes your skin. 

Don’t touch anything. Every piece here consumes or erodes.

They gore flaws in me. 

My ultimate novelty is the automaton 

of his five-year-old daughter that Descartes pried

from the hollow in his lungs when she died. 

The robot child, made of fabric and clockwork,

has her hair, eyebrows, and dress.  

Descartes took her with him to every address,

until she was pulled away 

from his deathbed. All who tried to keep 

the mechanical doll fled her fixed glare. 

Finally, someone

dumped the robot behind an antique shop.

Her eyes follow me, tendrils of orange and mistrust 

so biting it melts flesh.  

Yet sometimes I sit at a low table with her,

facing away. 

We have pretend tea. She shakes her head 

and moves her arms, then needs winding. 

She can only say, “Dada,” and has salt stains 

from an old ocean on her 

porcelain face, across the whole cheek, like a slap. 

I have not been able to chase that stain from her.

Someday I will become her possession in the wardrobe. 

She owns were she goes. She takes the air.

I stiffen. I have the beginning of a maroon mark 

on my face.

You will have to rewind me (remind me):

I am part of the collection.