The ominous nature of Robins Egg Shells 
and glass chess sets.

Does anyone remember if
we broke like
robins eggs or like the blue
and yellow plates that match
the kitchen walls?
Only my brother and I
remember each dish falling one
by one in a parade of buffalo
chicken fingers and smudges of ketchup--
The congealed blood of after school
dinner at the counter
when my father played the role
of chef.
We were the ones who missed
the blue and yellow dishes. 
And I put together our jigsaw puzzle
of almost-holidays like the 
Forth of July or movie night from
the pieces I pick
out of my heels each night before
bed when I sleep in a house
that isn't a house that
doesn't have a kitchen 
or robins eggs. 
But dishes were meant to be broken
and so were robins eggs
so we shouldn't worry about 
how things that can break
always find their way to the 
floor almost as gentle
and as inevitable as my
mother letting down her hair
from the clip she has always
uses to pull those red-brown wavy strands
away from her face
when she makes burnt pancakes
with robins eggs in the morning.
And I only like burnt pancakes 
from Bisquick and wearing over coats
of strawberry jam. They always
taste somewhat like
the sky. That's why we use robins 
eggs-- sky cloudy with flour and 
cloudy with times I have
made pancakes and wiped
grease from my wrists and 
from the cast-iron pan.
The pan that makes
all of us uneasy because
the handle always smells like turkey sausage
links and the timidness of 
an anorexic cooking zucchini.
We all know why we don't like
glass chess sets and yes
they remind me of robins eggs too--
but there has always been
something fragile between us
when we sat on the floor and 
somehow always found ourselves
in a check-mate, you're my younger
brother-- you're not supposed 
to devour my bishops like dinner plates.
When we break the chess set-- make
sure that we can break it like a 
robin's egg-- I don't want to put
it back together. We all knew
you know how to move pawns and
that you always castle your way 
in for the kill. Let's at least
agree to give the robins
eggs so that we can have pancakes
when we're done. I don't remember
what the blue and yellow
dinner plates looked like
but I knew that we didn't mean
to break them.