My family claims, when I was one, I’d climb
a chair in secret, stretch out my chubby child-
fingers, and open the abandoned butter dish.
Hours later, they’d find my tiny teethmarks.

For decades they have teased me, the mere sight
of butter the only ingredient they need to cook up
some new joke. Like the Christmas I unwrapped
an ornament from my older sister: a perfect glass replica

of a golden stick of butter on which she’d written
“Enjoy the flavor of Christmas” and “Not for consumption,”
as though I’d need the warning at 34 not to graze
my teeth along the ornament’s edge, not to plunge

in my teeth and feel a delicate and bloody crunch.
But that’s how all old family jokes go down,
isn’t it. Where you hope for the smooth silkiness
of something real, only to end up biting glass.