Blind, or blinders

Yesterday I went looking for a box of dolls. Workshop, upstairs, Dennison Street, under eaves, box that my mother sent at least six years ago when they sold the house. Six dolls. Aidan rejected four of them. One too big. She didn't like the hair on another. And two. Two dolls lost their eyes almost exactly when we took them out of the box. One pair, painted, turned to dust leaving two beige circles where the eyes had been. Another pair on the doll that I had painted, dressed when my mother signed me up for a doll making class, fell back into the baby's head, glass eyes hitting porcelain and making sweet but eerie music as I shook the baby, two black holes where the eyes had been. Two babies going blind in one day is about all that I can take. As if they'd never seen. Never seen.