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Mebble
by Taije Silverman

Then happiness became an egg that broke
across our table. Fragments of shell
through which yolk pooled to placemats:
bright goopy gold that filled loose napkin folds
as if all I could wish for from luck.
My three-year-old pulls himself up alongside
to mash peas on his tray and meow at my hand
and command time to follow and stay. Can I have that
for a minute, is what he asks now about my wallet, 
or a ball, or an eraser, so he can bring them like a word
between his lips. Will you stay with me for a minute,
is what he whispers every evening, and then whispers,
One more minute while he stares at a bar on his crib
till his eyelids collapse. The minute is a smell of smoke.
A texture of leaves in a barrel of flame, the rasp
of a match in late sun. Just one, but the days pass
in cages for clouds, or for wayward balloons…
a minute’s the sound of the egg as it breaks
but its fragments still cleave to the origin shape.
That’s a mebble, says my son, about everything.
We sit at the table and count out the ways, our three
lucky stars, our ten lucky stars, we add them to how
many snowflakes it takes to transform the back yard
to a shell. We wanted the mebble, the mebble 
was over, the mebble was all we now had. 

"Mebble," by Taije Silverman. Used by permission of the poet.