She
trusted me to bring home the eggs
true, not a test with a very high standard
but a trial - in form of course
where I could put my eight-year-old mug on the line and
erase the dozen other tasks I’d blown,
like a stick in the wind of my older sapling-siblings.
She trusted me to bring home the eggs,
I walked each step pride poised as a high-wire guy
suspended between store and doorway until
I reached the room where she lay,
gray and trying for a smile against the white sheets,
her breath wafted sweet as rotted apricots –
waiting for me to unlid the box and reveal
those dozen eggs, gleaming, unscarred, perfect
in her egg-shell-shattered world,
She gave me a thumbs up -
and for a mystic moment
in a shivery shaft
of setting sunlight
all was healed
again.
