Hi Hanna!!

Hi Hanna!!

July 2010

I slide the rhubarb cake into the oven and close the door. I see myself in the reflection because the oven light no longer works.

I look at my reflection.

Hi Hanna, I wave.

I wave back.

Always been a friendly child.

The oven looks a bit like a face. The two knobs as eyes and the door a big mouth.

A mouth where raw food is pushed in and baked food comes out again.

I imagine the oven’s mouth suddenly opening and throwing my cake back out with a retching sound.

I push the handle down harder to keep the oven door closed.

I begin cleaning the kitchen — the condition for baking a cake — and accidentally drop the spatula covered with raw batter.

I look around in shock.

No one nearby.

Only the oven face staring at me.

I smile at it awkwardly, the way I would smile at my mother if she saw me fumbling like this.

“BOOM DRUMROLL,”
I say, because the clattering sound of the falling spatula startled me.

I look at the oven again and repeat:

“BOOM DRUMROLL”

There lies everything

FLAT

0___________________o

I open the door to let the oven say 0_____o. A warm breath blows in my face. A breath that smells like cake but does not say oooh.

I appear again in the mirror of the door once it is closed and wave again. I wave back kindly.

Nice to run into yourself sometimes.

I almost think the Hanna opposite me will answer if I ask something.

I remember the time I thought I had found a new friend. It seemed as if someone answered when I shouted “hello” over the fields behind our garden and my voice echoed clearly.

(It only dawned on me when the far distance seemed to answer “Hanna” after I asked what his or her name was.)

I cannot resist and say something to myself in the oven door:

“Hi Hanna!”

I look at myself for a moment.

No answer.

That is usually what happens when people say hello to me.

Just like the real Hanna then.

Behind my reflected head the cake continues baking patiently.

Sometimes I think my mother sees me the way I now see myself in the oven door.

My thoughts floating like a faint image behind my head.

Like the rhubarb cake now.

Next time I decide I will pour the cake batter into a bundt pan.

Then when I look in the oven door

I will have a little halo around my head.

~Hanna

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