antagonist

By Margaret Atwood from The Door

Your children cut their hands on glass

by reaching through the mirror

where the beloved one was hiding.

You weren't expecting this:

you thought they wanted happiness,

not laceration.

You thought the happiness

would appear simply, without effort

or any kind of work,

like a bird call

or a pathside flower

or a school of silvery fish

but now they've cut themselves

on love, and cry in secret,

and you own hands go numb

because there's nothing you can do,

because you didn't tell them to

because you didn't think you needed to

and now there's all this broken glass

and your children stand red-handed

still clutching at moons and echoes

and emptiness and shadow,

the way you did.