Eggshell

Today she has scarcely moved. If there is
understanding
then that is what she feels
this chrysalis Sunday,
where new quiet
doesn’t boom anymore –
his echoes are softer,
and she dusts them off
into the bubbling
boiling with the eggs.
Three timid spines crest the water.

She raises them
carefully, humming
with their chalky chiming on the spoon,
imagining their centres –
fleshy wholes
pulled miraculously from that second heat
of birth.

Shored up on such shallow marble.
So intact.
And she thinks
        eggshell is what we mean by hardness.∎

Words by Eleanor Cousins Brown. Art by Holly Anderson.