by Holly Day.
Here is a little bird that should have been born
but something happened to its sky-blue shell. There should have been feathers
in that dark cavern, but there is only yolk and rubbery bone. One tiny malformed foot.
If you hold the little broken egg up to the sky, it almost disappears
the color is such a perfect match. If you hold it over the sun,
it’s the perfect size for an eclipse. If you squint,
you can imagine you can see through the thin shell, see inside the egg
see the silhouette of a fetal chick, quiet and curled as if still waiting for birth.
This is the baby that disappeared soon after the wedding
lost in the inconsolable melancholy
that never left my mother’s eyes.