Celeste Doaks
Dropped Brown Egg
“Everything becomes public in a small town”
— from Funes the Memorious by Jorge Louis Borges
Without the tiny scar on my right arm to remind me,
nothing would reel me back to that humid June day
when the air stood and did not move. Momma was busy
scrambling daddy’s royal breakfast and Old Spice snuck out
the bathroom door where daddy put the blade to face. That day I was
assigned to mind baby brother; and I arm-cradled him
on the front porch, bouncing him knee to knee, dreaming
of a taffy-colored baby girl. She would be my carmel icing,
my symphony of sugar. But when I awoke he lay
on concrete cracked and oozing, a brown egg frying,
sizzling so loud that momma flew from the kitchen,
and daddy’s shaving cream plopped to the ground,
a fallen white cloud, as he switched my one guilty limb.
