Poppet

So tell me -
Where is it hidden?
The poppet?
I know you have one
If I search your room
and sort through your treasures
Or look inside your pillow
Or beneath your houseplants, tangled in the roots
Will it be there?

Half black half white
Rough red stitches
Blind eyed doll-baby
Tell me -
Does it look like me?

Do you hold it as easily as you take my arm
When we promenade down the street
Do the button eyes glitter in the dim light
Black as mine
Do I mimic its movements subconsciously?
When you and I speak in the drowsy evening
and my head lolls to one side like a rag doll?

If I find it
If I rend the cloth body
If I rip myself open
What is in there?
I have wracked my mind
To figure out what you may have stolen
A picture perhaps, snapped of the two of us
But with your face cut out
Or a lock of hair lifted from my coat collar
An affectionate gesture of grooming
Your hand then slipped quietly into a pocket
Or a purloined note, scrawls from my own pen
My name barely legible - but each loop and line revealing all my secrets and tensions
Or the hem tear in my skirt
Did I catch it on something or is that more of a scissor cut?
It's hard to tell

It must be somewhere - tucked away
A charm working, a trick laid
For what else could be the explanation
For how often I think of you
And how often I see your face when I close my eyes

So where is it hidden?