Closed oven doors and girls who stay up past midnight.   

One morning I opened the ovens of my
own eyes and crawled inside. 
I had been baking brownies-- toothpick testing 
constellation-connecting the dots on the
crackled-face of the tray. We all have faces
like brownies if we spend too long
waiting for someone to slice us in grids--
I had wanted to be eaten by the handful--
fist carved into myself-- dough sticky 
and underdone-- brown muck of a box
mix from a sleep over we never had--
Did you remember to buy peanut oil?
Peanut oil is what makes the
taste like girls who stay up past midnight.
I didn't have a reason to finish the brownies.
They weren't much of anything
without the peanut oil or blue painted finger nails
bold enough to gouge out each square out
in a glump.
I got on all fours and I pretended
that I was fourteen-- still akin to scamper up the
stair case on my hands and knees--
climbed my bed posts using the vines ladders 
I grew from my ceiling-- I used to wonder about the
walls and how much space there was between the rooms
and how much space there was left
unused-- how much space there was
between bunk beds and how much
I have always felt like we keep getting cut into brownie grids.
So I crawled inside the oven-- shut the door
behind-- don't follow me Hansel 
I didn't enter to become a cake this time--
I crawled into the oven so I could live
in the walls of house that someone
told me was home. The house has the living room
of my house on Noble Street where we cut
down the evergreen trees by front windows 
the bed room is from the place on Main Street with the
green wallpaper and the raccoons in making
themselves homes in the walls, and the kitchen from
my friend's house where she taught me
how to turn on a gas stove to make
grilled cheese and peanut oil brownies 
that can only be eaten with your hands.
I had been right about the walls and the space
that was left unused and the way you can
hear everyone breathe from there. My face was crackled 
from the oven and I felt like a phantom-- covered
my face with my hands and cut my own skin into grids.
I watched the brownie face sputter from the other
side from where I sat safe in the thatched lines 
of the house they said was my home. 
The timer rand like morning through the wall's wide-whale veins
and everyone said it smelled like peanuts and chocolate
and morning but no one opened the oven.
No one opened up the walls-- tooth-pick
tapped holes to see if I was ready to come out--
they wouldn't have found my there anymore--
I would be where the evergreen trees had
gone-- rolled up with the green wall paper and
eaten from the blue finger nails of girls
who still have sleepovers and think call 
themselves girls. 
I crawled out again eventually and somehow
the brownies were done just through enough
to leave the edges chewy. I cut them into 
grids for everyone else who didn't know
anything about how much space we have unused.
They say the brownies taste like girls who stay
up past midnight and knees 
and staircases and closed oven doors.