On Not Repeating

Counting, like in the tales
where girls are given impossible
tasks to numb their fingers and hearts— 
Separate grain from pebbles by nightfall, 
sew seven shirts without speaking a word 
for seven years. Silence itself, part 
of the spell: a clause in a contract 
you don't even remember having signed 
in blood or ink. Only in those stories
are there helpers: talking mice, 
birds, ants, meaning belief 
in the kindness of nature which 
somehow bends toward you because 
it intuits an injustice. But I want 
to know how the curse can be broken, 
how the loop of bad luck can be severed 
once and for all, not just reversed. 
I want to drop this needle and 
burn this loom, see my loves 
emerge out of the forest or 
soften from stone back into flesh. 
Let whatever I may have mislaid 
be suddenly found in the corner 
of a coat pocket, the toe of a shoe.