Reframing

The dollhouse began in his hands,
careful corners squared in sure fingers.
He lingers till the roof pitch is perfect, wallpaper
rolled and ready. But unsteady hands begin
pointing the chimney stone by stone.

 He stops to groan. He's grown skinny.
The ache of bone, the slow dismantling of frame,
the strain across the smile. A diecast kettle,
and metal woodstove wait in a box beneath.
His first niece, he wants to give her a piece,

a gift she won't forget. He wants peace and well-set
stairs, and something more than armchairs and hospitals.
His blood is boiling, roiling with radioactive heat.
But he sits at the table when he can, a hand bracing
each shingle in place till the tingle of nerves lace long

sharp lines of pain. Hodgkin's Lymphoma. There will be
no diploma. No college classes. No spouse.
No second birthday to give this house. But he
pins each log in place as his eyes hollow.
And each swallow dries and rasps. His grasp

on log siding keeps sliding. The glue holding them here
isn't strong enough. There’s a gasp when he leaves.
The house retreats to the basement workshop,
gathering dust instead of gift wrap. And no one
gives it to his niece. She knows it's there. She remembers

the square doors, and tours by hands that no longer hold hers.
Each visit, she sneaks the creaky stairs to rearrange
the waiting box, pretends to knock, and imagines the home full
of eyes she misses. And one day, when she
is twice as old as he will ever be, and has three daughters of her own

the house comes home to her. She dampens a rag, and skims the
flagstone foundation he laid. Lifts layer by layer the dust,
fixes shingles that have shifted or fallen. And finally unrolls
the wallpaper he picked out so many years ago.

There's a kitchen for the woodstove. And a music room
where a kitten she's collected dances down piano keys.
There's a front room library. Each book a handcrafted favorite,
and a single doll to savor it. A gray haired doll with crows feet

he never grew, crinkling corner smiles, a Mr. Rogers sweater
sitting content on the window seat, where he can watch everybody grow.


Christiana Doucette builds miniatures in the evening, because attention to tiny details brings scenes alive in beautiful ways. She pays the same attention to small moments with emotional resonance in her poetry. She judged poetry for San Diego Writer’s Festival 2022-2025. She is the 2024 Kay Yoder Scholarship for American History recipient. Her full-length works are represented by Leslie Zampetti [Open Book Literary]. Find her recent/forthcoming poetry in Rattle, One Art, Last Stanza, and Wild Peach.