Dominoes

Dominoes by Lauren Shapiro

Life is mirrors pointed at other mirrors and then one day
your mom comes in and breaks them all.
She says her mother made her do it.
And her mother’s mother put rocks in the soup
and tied toys too high to reach.
Nobody knew that woman’s mother
but legend has it she wasn’t a woman at all
but a giant prehistoric mermaid. She did her best,
but her kind was never meant to survive the treacheries
of evolution. Oh, lighten up. So your parents got divorced,
and when they fought you went outside to play
but all your toys were hanging in a net at the top of a tree,
including the transformer truck you got for your birthday,
and there was a bird making a nest in it.
Why couldn’t you see any beauty in that?