In the house your dad grew up in, the cupboards always hosted a motley crew of vessels to drink from. Like a potluck of glassware and plastic cups, finding two of the same thing was more the six-sided dice of chance than the gears and levers of cognizant planning. Shortly after another set of glasses had been purchased, a round number, four or six or eight, another glass would slip from your grandma Claire's fingers. A couple weeks or a couple months meantime, some random or unknown acquisition -- another orphaned cup or foster-parented glass -- would wordlessly appear to take up ranks in the pastiche of the cupboard's piecemeal population.
Enough times, your lola Claire hunched over a faucet, a pink ribbon of blood finding a clockwise path to the drain, an ice cube requisitioned to staunch the flow. And enough times your dad witnessed the breakage to know that it was never seemingly in anger. Glass was merely your lola's weakness. Her Kryptonite. And she passed that Kryptonite on to your dad.
Drinking glasses inexplicably burst in your dad's hands, he strays his lip across cracked rims, a gallon of apple juice heads due south to the kitchen floor, or a glass-topped coffee table implodes after hours of steady, unassuming employ. Into the cupboard, out of the dishwasher, around the sink, or on the dining table, glass chinks, splits, spiderwebs, and buckles despite his careful and diligent hand. But unlike your lola, your dad too rarely suffers a cut, too rarely sees his own blood, and too often wonders what it would finally take.
