The Melancholy of a Mannequin

If I suck on this popsicle stick long enough

I will surely perish,

They warned me of such trauma

and until now I had looked the other way

The other way was always tempting

and dishonorable in its ability to be a catalyst

for nothing but the pivot from right to left

and back to front

I tried to tell them I was hollow on the inside

but someone had glued my lips together long ago

and someone told me that thinking twice about anything

would get me into three times the trouble

That never added up to me

but I was too busy cinching my waist

and sucking it all in

and blowing hot air on the glass 

so they would think I was something more than this

But in December,

they would flood in here and flood out

dropping the casualties of the holiday fare

and when the sun went down,

they would forget about me,

about their window shopping

And it would be a sordid affair,

once every third Saturday of the last month of the year,

when they would stare and talk about how beautiful I was

was