Sunday 3 March 2013

Egg and Spoon Race

When I
first saw you, I was
pickled in your wide stare, your
eyes gouging at the back of my skull,
spooning everything away, like cooked egg-
white from the shell of my brain casing. My own
eyes spilled out like yolk, and you soon realised they
tasted good on the back of your spoon; you licked your
fingers clean of my residues, like slices of warm buttered
bread. But, being a romantic, a sucker for over-egging the
pudding and fussing like a cook over custard, I stuck around
and had you pick me clean, till I was no more than a scrunch
and a crunch of hollow glaucous sphere, egg-shaped in your
palm. You hated treading on egg-shells, you said. It felt like I
was about to break under your weight at any minute, so your
play went. Well stand on me, I said. You’ll see. Crack me on
 the edge of your spoon, swipe me with the knife. Poach me.
 I’ll make you my wife. I love you: don’t you see? You lay
me on the floor; centred me beneath your foot, and
adopted the crane, brooding hungrily like a bird
 over cuckolded eggs. But still I would not yield.
 You shifted on your heel, and still I never
 bailed. You said you never realised
 how much I’d been holding –
 how much the yoke of
you weighed.

                                                                                                           The water 
                                                                                                        was scolding and
                                                                                                            I was cooked. But you always 
                                                                                                    knew you had me hooked. Soon, we nested;
                               and now, I’m crested in the curve of your embrace, cool and metallic, but not out of 
                                 place. For you pickled me, devilled and devoured me, boiled me. Now you carry   
                                                                                                 me, as I once carried you. The steady race,  
                                                                                                         the steady hand. The finish 
                                                                                                          clear. The egg and 
                                                                                                            the spoon.

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