Don't Look At Her

Her name is *Isadora.* They found her in the attic trunk, wrapped in that burgundy velvet the same velvet from the curtains in the old house on Louisa Street. No one remembered packing her away. Her porcelain is cracked, but she was never dropped. The cracks appeared on their own, the night the little girl who owned her stopped talking. The eyes are what bother you most. That milky blue. They don't reflect light they hold it. The last owner swore Isadora looked one way in the morning and a different way at night. A little closer to the edge of the velvet. A little more hair falling over her forehead. If you put her on a shelf and leave the room, when you come back her head will be tilted just a fraction. Just enough to know she heard you leave. And if you listen after midnight, you can hear the faintest tick... tick... tick... like cracked porcelain trying not to break any further.