An Eggshell And Threads
There is middle in everything, a center to everything.
That center can be seen as anything like cocking around a windowpane.
A barrier of any kind always with a sole purpose: to keep together and to work together.
I recently realized that the middle for a woman was something much more delicate.
An eggshell, wrapped in frayed thread.
Hairline cracks peak through, slowly spreading.
My middle was never supposed to be a clock where it chimes the hour of home for you.
The shadow of a clock that was never mine, just a vacant space to remind me once again of how normalcy was something that was never really meant to be in my possession in the first place.
A pretty shiny box.
Shake it and hear the clatter of sound inside.
Remove the lid, what will you find?
Broken pieces of eggshell laying upon a bed of frayed threads.
Thinned by the air; air that could be mistaken as tissue paper.
This tissue never catching the air or water.
The broken shards of eggshell thrown in the air to replace the dream clouds that naïvely hung in my dreamer’s sky once.
My middle is now the quiet grief of hope that I had no choice but to let go of.
For thirty-six years, my middle was an eggshell wrapped in threads that I always knew would never hold together for forever.
With each thread that fell, I knew the exposure to the reality that was coming, and now it’s here.
Now, I am left to deal with the silent screams of the question, “What the hell did you do?”
The very screams that were once chimes of hope that I heard the melody of song that would sing to me maybe someday despite the threads slowly fraying, and falling away.
The tiny cracks beginning to show on the outside of the eggs’ shell.
I was never quick enough to cover them with the tight threads, that always frayed and never felt tight enough.
Broken eggshell, threads, and a quiet grief of hope.
This is my current middle.
Now, I am left with no choice, but to take the pieces of eggshell, and scraps of thread, and turn them into a new middle that is a wholeness that won’t make me grieve this quiet grief of hope or mourning thoughts of “what could have been” for too long.
Eggshell and threads are my middle that I have no choice but to hold together with a new purpose that is not meant from chimes, walls, or a dreamer’s sky, but instead is just made for something simpler.
