Chipped Dish
Call it inevitable; a crack here,
a crack there, distributed so evenly
across our twenty dollar floral IKEA dish set
that you’d think I did it on purpose.
Inevitable, like the winter migration
of predatory birds, or IKEA
releasing a new fall collection dish set. This time,
I pulled a plate too quickly from the wash
Lo and behold, a chip in the plate.
Like the sunrise, or your plywood bookshelf
disintegrating the first time you load it
into a U-Haul; incidents too consistent
to be accidents. Ceramics last forever in
a landfill but a year in my house,
and the leaves fall, and your grandmother dies,
and your baby is born, and you
are chipped again and again,
and I will chip again and again
things born to last forever and things
built to fall apart, and we will sweep
the shards and dance around the house
and laugh as we’re chipped away.
