glass tables

when mom was little she broke a glass table.
i imagine it collapsing inward--
impossibly shattered right down the middle. 
when i was little i had nightmares about glass tables. 
i was always protecting them. 
their glass was always thin & easily shattered. 
my brothers & i break dozens 
of drinking glasses in the kitchen.
we tweezer slivers of glass out of our bare feet.
somewhere a table is waiting. guilt travels
through the blood. we don't tell each other
that sometimes our furnature turns to glass.
our beds gone clear & flat. the coolness 
of glass against skin. angles peer in
at our terrariums & try to feed us crickets.
angels are terrifying & they buzz all over our house--
they have mor eyes than they know what to do with
this is all i'd like to say about them.
mom says it was her fault-- running around the house.
a wreckless force. children run in my parent's house
at night to make up for that space i left.
childhood is all about what you break & where.
i never broke a single physical bone
but i severed thousands. i signed the casts
of classmates & wrote on my arms in sharpie.
a glass table hovers in the upstairs hallway.
it moans that it wants to die in my dad's voice.
i count the number of time he says i wish i were dead
each time i visit. this time it's seven & i haven't even
left yet. is a world where nothing
is see-through? are there childhoods made 
of cinderblock? mom's loud feet across the carpet.
she's ten years old & she's already learned
how to stand on the ceiling. i try to help her down.
i don't want anything to break. she turns to glass
& fragments--glittering in the air. glass falls
like snow. i can feel the shards swarm my lungs.
what will i confess to my children? by children
i mean drawer of spoons. was this the only thing
she ever broke? what did her mother say? 
her mother, my grandmother, looms above this all
with her fingers knotted & full of indestructable wood.
i am a glass girl in a hallway & so is my brother.
the glass in my lungs turns to fireflies
& they are mine & no one else will get to see them.
i am careful as i use my parent's dishes. i will not
bust anymore than i already have. i always feel like
we all broke something more-- something great that 
none of us can remember. something like original sin--
deep & unerasable. our children stand on the ceiling
threatening to drop drinking glasses
to the floor. i learn to sleep on glass--to walk on it--
to breathe it.