they'll call you goldilocks & you'll eat cold porridge & they'll call you goldilocks when you cry your eyes red & climb up the carpet staircase to the forest-- your hair is neither gold nor silver but a dull-straw blonde from bleaching it one too many times-- your feel like kindling-- like another bundle of sticks & you'll assume heaven is in one of those boxes in the attic-- the ones we never bothered to unpack even though we've lived on noble street for decades now-- grip the banister & say a pray sent from your blue DS-- from PictoChat-- a plea scrawled in electronic ink-- are there any saints for you to send messages to? do they write back? you can flip your screen around & use it as a flashlight while you search for the light switch all four up the attic stairs to the forest with the little cottage-- smoke pouring from chimney-- you're hungry-- you're hungry like all girls with hair made of kindling with game-boy-lit faces with 11:11 wishes sticky-note written on the bed room walls-- does your god feed you? you're hungry for porridge & saints & reaching into card board boxes to see if your mother packed away heaven up there-- in tissue paper or maybe in the crate with all the porcelain dolls still in their wilting boxes-- you find a house in the woods as the story goes-- as the story always has gone-- your body walks in the front door without you-- this time you eat the cold porridge because you want to feel sorry for yourself & you know the mama bear won't mind-- she's used to sharing-- you can't eat it all even though you're still hungry-- hungry like the bare-naked plowed fields that bristle like your own haphazardly shaved thighs-- corn husk & stalk-- you're not sure what you're hungry for so your skin looks for a resting place & sits in the smallest chair because you've heard the story before & you know you have to break it to pieces-- up the creaky stairs to the bed room you lay on the hardest bed & tuck your knees into your chest-- ribs press on wood press on the thumb print of your skeleton-- what use is heaven in the bottom of a card board box & there the forest grew thick & hungry-- & you wait for the bears to come-- to come eat you up-- to come bite your straw hair-- dry & brittle-- to find heaven we will have to give into the teeth & to the open windows & to the cold porridge on the kitchen counter-- share with your mother-- she is only trying to help-- the bears aren't coming-- this is your own attic & you light your DS screen-- your own bed is hard & beneath you the rocking chair shattered-- shards still stuck in your spine-- oh they will call you goldilocks & you will knock over a box of forest-- heaven was not found in a day
