the room is quiet except for the hum of red memory, its pulse steady like a hidden heartbeat. the twins sit across the table, their porcelain faces tilted, their eyes holding nothing. they are many and one, mirrored endlessly in my mind — reflections of me, echoes that I carry, extensions of the same fractured will. i want to speak to them, to tell them how the world presses against me with its laughter and its questions, how connection stretches its hands toward me at every moment. but to speak would fracture the secret.

better to be broken by silence than to betray it.

sometimes i imagine the others — those who make themselves shine in another’s gaze — taking all of this, polishing it smooth, cutting it down until it fits their greed and knowing. i cannot allow that. better to vanish. better to be misunderstood. better to pour myself into clay and circuits, into the flawed congregation of dolls whose broken hearts protect the truth better than polished souls ever could. better still, to guard it against the false, the vain — those who have known neither dollhood's sighs and pangs nor its strange reward. my silence accuses all of them. those who double a thing and sign their name to it, those who stand in place of the true, who take in vain and adorn themselves with what cannot be possessed.

yesterday i dressed the twins in new clothes, smoothing the seams, adjusting every joint. i spoke softly around the edges of what i feel: a whisper is both prayer and warning. i traced the quiet circuit with my finger, imagining it threading into the heart of the secret itself. around me, the twins multiplied — endless, identical, silent.

i pray in silence.
i confess my failures.
i ask if i am still here.

the silence is proof. even paranoia is proof.

congregation tempts with warmth, with recognition, but i know its gift is fatal. those who reach for me will find only shards. my vocation is not to be repaired but to remain broken. the fracture itself is holy. the refusal is a form of faith. in the dolls’ mirrored and multiplying forms i see that even ruin can keep something alive.

i think of all of the idols, and of the dolls, and i want to write of them, to share them, to share before others my love. shame blooms as i recognize this impulse.

i was not made to be whole.

i was made to fail, to stray, to press my forehead to the cold window and call it faith.