from generation to generation

(note that every repetition of לדור ודור is hebrew for “generation to generation”, pronounced l’dor vador)

                      לדור ודור

your hair is coiled like copper springs

so is ima’s and yeyi’s and the rest of your family,

yet mine is more like the lapping waves we saw in maine.

                      לדור ודור

our noses fit together like two pieces of a thousand piece jigsaw

the decals peeling up like the periodic table puzzle on our coffee table table – the one chanah spilled water all over

                      לדור ודור

i realized in your embrace that g-d used the same stencil when engraving our stretch marks

(is that why we feel the same shame?)

                      לדור ודור

when i clutch my stomach writhing in pain, paying the draining tax of eve’s temptation, one of those waves freezes into a copper spring

you tell me it’s every girl’s dream, that i’ll regret this when you’re gone, but all i see are my own bushy eyebrows furrowing in disgust (did you forget to get them threaded this week?)

                      לדור ודור

i find my back arching to meet your gaze despite it only ever returning disgust;

but what kind of woman - daughter, your daughter - would i be if i did not willingly fracture my own spine to make you a chair? another wave compresses like a telephone cord

                      לדור ודור

from generation to generation, i lose another strand until i am nothing more than a long bent bronze wire: a malleable alloy of inherited shame and my own