Created for Destruction

A paper egg lies crushed under my feet

in robin’s speckled blue, a shattered mosaic

wet with ooze, 

and I think of a babies’

fine, thread crown, their soft unfused

heads bobbing, moist beaks

shaking for wiggling worms,

 

made to expand and crush,

ordained by gravity

to drop from cradled nests,

held together with

dotted blue blankets.

 

Up in the eaves she sits, shadowed,

her wings stirring inside empty jars.

She dreams of pushing downy balls

to earth, to see if they will fly.

One step nearer to dirt.

 

I see her, 

swollen belly engorged with fire,

a trembling god before the sunset.

Her life’s work floats inside a brittle egg

she made to throw against a rock,

a paper doll that cannot keep

held tight, like sharpened glass, against

her feathered chest.