My mother behaved as if her life
were something being done to her
and a counselor told me that
very likely someone did something
awful to her when she was three
years old or so but she can’t remember
who or what so at some point
she confronts everyone in her life
with a convoluted problem
a financial crisis or a health concern
something insoluble it’s like
she takes a Rubik’s Cube and turns
it a few times but that doesn’t quite
represent how fubar she feels
so she breaks the pieces off
one by one but still she feels more
broken than that so she takes a hammer
to it and gets in my face
or my wife’s face or my sisters’ faces
or the face of some new friend
who hasn’t figured her out yet
and says you shattered my Rubik’s Cube
now put the pieces back together
matching all the pieces to other pieces
of the same color and I or my wife
or my older sister or our younger
sister or Mom’s new friend who hasn’t
figured her out yet foolishly tries
to fix what we didn’t break though
it’s clearly very broken so broken
that it can’t be fixed by anyone
and anyone who tries will soon
find themselves smashed into pieces