Mannequin

      I have no purpose in life. I sit atop my owner's dresser, my wooden frame blending in with the wooden surface of the wardrobe. In fact, we're cousins the dresser an I. I recognize the distinct sent of pine out of which we were both craved. We were neighbors, stocked up high in the IKEA warehouse. Yet, while the dresser is used multiple times a day, I am merely forgotten and left to gather dust. I get jealous with each opening and closing of a drawer it receives. I ask my owner this, "Why buy me if you planned on subjecting me to complete neglect and inadequate feelings of self-worth?" I imagine her replying, Because I had an extra $1.50, that's why. I mean nothing to her. Not even worth the price of a good pack of number #2 pencils (other distant cousins I'm even more jealous of. They get more action in a day than I've ever gotten.) I am the perfect company for a budding artist and if presented correctly, I can light up any piece of artwork and grace the canvas of any talented painter. Yet sadly, I have never been given the opportunity. With my proportioned figure, fully jointed to allow for realistic human poses, I am the perfect model. I'll tell you this Lusi, no one puts wooden-artist's-mannequin in a corner*(...on top of a dresser).
       Even worse, on top of the neglect I face on a daily basis, it's worse when the human has friends over. They constantly judge. One named Sophia can't resist giving me dirty looks while whispering snide remarks of my ugliness. And inability to do anything of worth. And overall stupidity. Well I'm sorry I can live up to your standards - I'm only made of wood*. There comes the rare moment when it's what the humans call "Cleaning Day". They usually occur on the weekends and I patiently await them each week. Only then is there the possibility for my joints, feeble from immobility, to receive the chance to be stretched and perhaps repositioned into a new location where they will remain until the subsequent cleaning day. I'll show them. One day I will break free of my cheap, Swedish-made, good-for-nothing stereotype and grace the studio of a prominent artist. Hopefully...if I'm not first recycled in the hands of my owner. The thought is too terrifying to even fathom.



*Author's Note: Just couldn't resist including references from both Dirty Dancing AND Pinnochio. Too easy.