My mother's carefully-schooled, blank face
comes close to breaking when I ask her
about the day I was conceived.
"We were afraid of the war, of death,"
she says. She means Vietnam.
"We didn't know how to stop feeling angry.
We didn't know how to keep loving
in the face of that much pain."

She laughs now, a short braying bark.
I press for more. "We thought a baby
would save our souls." She doesn't look
at me, hands dormant, palms pressing up
against the air around her.
"But we were hippies, you know.
People weren't logical in 1974."

I knew. I know all about my parent's logic.
My father's basement workbench
is a graveyard of abandoned nails,
bolts, and screws, all painstakingly
organized in descending order of size.
My mother's herb garden is an open-air
mausoleum of starched and propped leaves,
slowly browning in the airless heat
of unforgiving August afternoons.

I wonder if they'd be happy to know
that I have the dubious honor
of being their masterpiece, because
everything they touch loses something,
like King Midas in a mirror world.