An egg of despair

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an egg of despair

It started in the classroom. The students were baby birds sitting in desks, mouths open for the inch worms of knowledge I dropped into their gaping beaks. In the beginning their wet feathers revealed tender skeletons. As their downy plumage sprouted they screeched for more: cockroaches of compassion, beetles of love, caterpillars of entertainment, and centipedes of speedy spoonfed answers. How can a teacher keep pace with growing grackles?

A lump formed in my gullet. At night I drank goblets of Pinot Grigio to dissolve it, but the stone didn’t wash away. Instead it plummeted down to my rib cage, and leaned on my lungs. It stole my breath.

Egg removal instructions from the faculty handbook: Slowly extract the egg. Take care not to puncture its tender surface. If the shell cracks, sadness will ooze into the chambers and crevices of the body. Blood vessels will carry tiny pebbles of panic and terror to the lymph nodes, where despair will metastasize, corroding the liver, pancreas,and kidneys, freeze the heart, and turn the brain to mush.

In the bathroom I opened my mouth in front of a mirror, and reached a hand down my throat, palpating dark, moist spaces until I touched an egg, lodged behind my breastbone. With raccoon-like fingers I prized the nodule away from my inner cavities, wrapped it in tissue paper, and brought it to My Therapist. She intuited the proper course of action. Sitting across from me on a chintz love seat in her sunny office, she smiled, took out a silver key from the pocket of her skirt, pulled aside the neckline of her blouse, and unlocked a door in her chest. A secret chamber, she told me. She held out her hand for the egg, which I placed in her palm. First she pricked a pinhole in the thin shell with a needle, and then centered the egg on a miniature tuffet inside the chamber.

And there my egg continues to gestate in a new nest. I wonder if it causes My Therapist pain? As I talk to her on bright afternoons silhouettes of people I once knew dance and gesture above our heads. The shadows form a dusty cloud that hovers in the room, blurry and black around the edges, until a breeze catches it, and the smoky shape floats through an open window, wafting into sunlight infused ether.

readwritepoem and totally optional prompts

Photo credit: egg anyone? by Debbie Shiel at stockxchange.

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