Velveteen

I want to tell my Dad that he shouldn’t have gone to jail, but more importantly, I want to tell him that they, (he and my mother) should have told me that he was in jail. Then, at least, I would have known that his being away from me was not optional, he didn’t choose to leave me, somebody else had locked him up.
I want to go back in time and tell Peter that my heart was broken, that it mattered very much to me, that I cared a lot that he had suddenly disappeared without explanation. I would tell him that he was my friend and if he had only told me that he needed to go and be with Janarai I would have understood that. At that time it would not have hurt my feelings too much. But suddenly and inexplicably loosing my friend and musical companion, that was painful. Agonizing. It made me less than a friend, a nobody. I would tell him now, if I could, that after that, I wasn’t able to sing again for 7 years.
I would go back and tell my weeping awkward teenage sister,
" I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything. I’m not sure what anyone should do."
But most importantly I wouldn’t say more than that, instead I would listen, and maybe suggest we go roller skating afterwards.
Maybe there is nothing that I can say or should say. I am just a character in a sad story. But something strange has possessed me so that now there is something more to do, something other than being that sad character. Now there is devil’s work to do. I will always be the same sad puppet, but I will do more than play my part. It would seem that I am a salvaged play thing for the old devil, and like any good toy I will happily serve in games the manufacturer never intended. Perhaps the old devil is like me and hopes to rescue sad toys from sad games by inserting them in strange games that adhere to outrageous rules and are filled with unusual circumstances. For that I am grateful.
If all of this is the product of a cracked or warped mind, then nothing is lost. There is no chance for me to be made right. I was already made wrong. So now we will take this broken thing we call Etanna and make it something neither right nor wrong. We will invent a new game for it, a game which suits its warped disposition. We will play with it until the day comes when it can no longer be manipulated, but even should its head pop off, we will find a use and a new game for it until time has ground it to no more than a fine powder.
Then we will say farewell Etanna. And in her most secret pocket of hopes, she may cling to the notion that, like the velveteen rabbit, she might be given new life after she has been burned to ash. If not, there was never anything to loose, and there is always something to gain by wild striving.
Put your tender ear to my lip child and I will whisper a story to you, a new story, a secret story that the dolls from the old sad story can never know about. Rest your head on my chest child, for a moment, and know that I am not the kind who throws broken things away. I mend them if I can. I make them other than they were and I breathe new life into them.
So cry if you must, for I think your first maker drew a tear drop on your cheek, but if you give me time, I will turn it into the petal of a flower opened wide under the moon’s pale kiss. Such horror and delight will be ours in these new games we make together. We shall do it all on tipped toes with fingers pressed over our lips, and though there are things that we might want to say, we shall never tell anyone anything at all.