The Cruellest Month

An egg seems fragile

It was almost Easter, the autumn
days were colder, shortening,
and my marriage was dead.
Awaiting colour on the bench,
seven speckled eggs
from my friend's free-range hens
were something positive
on which to focus my attention.

An egg seems fragile, vulnerable, until
you take a pin to its narrow end.
The shell resists, but I insisted,
picking, scratching, turning the point,
penetrating the shell,
piercing the interior membrane.
I slid the pin perversely inside
and dismantled the wholeness of yolk.

I heard the keys bite into the door.
My stomach went cold, a stone inside.
All butterflies are dead. He did not
greet me, but I half-heard a comment,
bitter as day-old coffee, resentful
of what, dusty doormats? The house
had changed. It was nobody's home.

Once I had blown out every egg,
innards saved for later in a bowl,
I made a dye bath, vinegar, twenty
drops of cochineal, hot water.
The empty eggs bobbed about
in their carmine pool. I supressed them
with a plate like a lid, and let them set.

Having fifteen minutes to kill
I brewed a pot, even offering a cup
to the bitter man, meeting with rude refusal.
It is easy to fake civility. I was stunned
as to how we two had come together.
There was no more chance of renewal.

Seven pinkish eggs to marble red -
in a wide shallow bowl I dropped forty
beads of cochineal, twice as bright,
and a dollop of extra-virgin olive oil.
With a fork I made swirls on the surface
then rolled each egg once, to pick up
bloody streaks of a darker red.
Once blotted, I left their hollow bodies to dry.

When Easter Sunday came I knew
I would still hide the chocolate
up and down the garden, my children
glad for tradition, pretending that
everything was normal, my daughter
too old for bunnies, my son bewildered,
but each child happy to end the morning
with a full basket. Months later I would find ,
a final dead egg, crushed, flaky, favoured by ants.



April 24—Easter