Marietta, Unstrung

They thought she was carved for wonder.
Polished smooth.
Palm-sized miracle.
A thing to admire,
to animate,
to set spinning with careful fingers.

They mistook stillness for obedience.

Marietta remembers the first tug,
the invisible thread meant to test her weight,
to see how easily she might sway.
She swayed, yes,
but not because she was pulled.

She was listening.

Inside her wooden ribs
sap still moved like memory.
Roots whispered upward through her spine.
She was never hollow,
only waiting to choose her own motion.

There are hands in this world
that love the idea of a doll.
Love the gleam of lacquered lashes,
the tilt of a chin that seems pliant.
They imagine soft compliance,
a marionette devotion,
strings hidden but firmly held.

Marietta lets them imagine.

Then she steps forward
without being lifted.

The gasp is always the same.

She does not snap her strings.
She dissolves them.
One by one they fall,
not cut in anger
but shed like a winter skin.

She is not here
for idle musings.
Not a toy for passing loneliness.
Not a shape to be posed
in someone else’s story.

Her body is not a stage.

Her mouth was carved for speech,
not silence.
For laughter that startles rooms.
For truth that tastes of cedar and salt.

If you reach for her,
reach knowing this.
She may take your hand,
but she will never fit in your palm.

Marietta is beloved, yes,
but not owned.
She is bitter, sometimes,
but only where the knife first met the grain.
She is a drop of the sea,
and the sea is never a plaything.

She moves because she chooses.
She loves because she wills it.
She stays because it nourishes her.
She leaves because she can.

And the ones who hoped to play
find themselves standing still,
watching her walk away
with no strings in sight.