Bad Luck Was Learned Early

Bad Luck Was Learned Early

Did your mother tell you about luck,

how it waits in ordinary corners,

hiding in tables and doorways,

listening for careless hands.

She said never put new shoes on the table,

as if leather could invite sorrow,

as if footsteps not yet taken

might already know how to leave.

She warned about ladders and narrow spaces,

about tempting the sky by walking beneath it,

as though one wrong step

could open a door time refuses to close.

Umbrellas were meant for weather, not rooms,

never opened where walls could hear,

because protection brought indoors

turns into an insult for fate.

I followed those rules for years,

not because I believed in luck,

but because I believed in her voice,

and the way fear dresses itself as care.

Now she is gone and the rules remain,

small rituals standing where she once did,

I still hesitate at tables and doorways,

still feel watched by old warnings.

Perhaps bad luck was never the danger,

perhaps it was love teaching us

how to be careful with the world,

long after the teacher has gone.

I live by these quiet superstitions now,

not to avoid loss,

but to remember the hands

that tried to protect me from it.