The Bluest Egg By Kaitlin Solimine Under a cherry tree I found a robin’s egg, broken, but not shattered. I had been thinking of you, and was kneeling in the grass among fallen blossoms when I saw it: a blue scrap, a delicate toy, as light as confetti It’s the dead center of a very wet summer and I’m pregnant with our third child. We retreat from an urban pandemic, away from the Bay Area’s fog, to the humid marshlands of coastal New England where earthworms line the driveway waiting to desiccate and die, and the kids find a robin’s nest in the roof’s eaves. A few weeks of watching, waiting: mother robin sitting patiently atop the messy nest. Our anthropomorphized view of her: stoic and consistent. I feel kinship with her. This waiting. I remember the late egg days, how birth cracks you open, leaves fissures where once you were whole (torn labia, mastitis, pelvic floor dysfunction). Does she know her entire parenting life will be waiting? Waiting for them to fall asleep. Waiting for them to put on their shoes. Waiting for them to exit the school yard. Waiting for them to fly. Fly away. Her infinite patience scratches at me like a jealous itch. Do not waste this virtue, I think to tell her, but cannot speak bird words. One day we wake on a sunny day to see the mother departed. In her stead, two tiny bird heads, still wet from their egg lives, are visible above the nest. We visit them daily, seeking their hungry, persistent beaks searching
18
