The sky rolled onto its stomach.
I couldn’t see the edges of—

I stayed up late playing dollhouse
but denying the verb.
What was I doing, dissolving
into doorframes, into architecture
of lives I made up but made
real as I knew.

That small plastic house,
the structure of bone
hidden between dusk
and elementary school classroom.
The plastic creak of small hands,
careful letting sleep lie.

In the bright daylight I shut doors,
shut my mouth, sucked on plastic
rooms of night. A sleepy willful
drifting from room to room,
through all the heavy doors
adults held open.

My dollhouse only had one door,
front door with plastic hinges
swinging, summoning.
All the other walls parted
in archways like mouths
breathing rooms into each other.

No space for the dark
sequestered danger of another’s place—
rooms like skinning,
gleaming wet muscle flexing
in flight, in how, and why
to step inside. Shut me up

inside that small immensity.
Hallways treaded down,
the soft rubber tap of heels,
careful feet treading
through night, through hallways.
The true flight of illusion, how

a bird pretends to be the sky,
a girl pretends to be a house.