Alice West

10 ways to crack an egg

With our smallest hands it ends like this:
Crumpled, a bewildered face, sticky fingers
Or
Running from a height, from a hand it’s too easy to drop and –
We know what follows.

Or subtler:
The spilling of a shard
Like grit between teeth-on-teeth,
Stung. Wingeing, fate-kissed.

Or bowl-smacker, the orthodox
Spanks child to bleed potential and she grows
Somewhat, the rest discarded – still exists.

Or the one-mitt-smashers
Smugly brandish forefinger and thumb and one brutal palm
To tear open the shell,
Freeing only egg-juice, all the splintered intact;
Their one-handed wonder, godlike –
Neatly scruffy, like an omelette.

Or prod-and-pull, separate them,
A cup in each hand and a spillage of milky tears
Is a child between lives, bobbing,

Or the thrown-in-from-chilled,
Shocked in blazing waters, pop
Well, they had little chance.

Or the boiled egg, successful:
Hard –
Done by, battered and peeled, cut vertical,
A pear-drop womb,
Or soft –
Tickled, levered up at the crux,
Like an egghead, I once thought: unhinge me, unload me,
But it’s not that simple.

And I, pinpricked, head and tail,
Breath through me, not mine
Lips to my coral bones, blow
And daughter when I die make me an eggshell mosaic –