Doll in a cage

The stage lights are too bright. They always are. Porcelain fingers smooth the hem of a dress you did not choose. The fabric is stiff, pastel, wrong—made to suggest innocence rather than reflect truth. Your joints click softly as you move, a sound the audience never notices over the music. Smile. The command isn’t spoken. It never needs to be. It tightens somewhere behind your eyes, a familiar pressure, like invisible strings pulling at your face. You obey before you can decide not to.