"Soundbite: Ocean #72"

I am the eggshell upon which you lightly tread.
Prone to cracking; handle with care.
Frail bits of sharp and smooth,
Speckled with promises long forgotten
Like the empty robin’s eggs I’d find as a child at spring’s end.
I display them with motherly pride,
Until my brother throws a football across the room,
And my eggs turn to dust.
I – with a rage scaring us all – take to the floorboards,
And paint their splintered surface with snot and tears. 

I have become what I intended to save. 

Your turn.

You :

are skin and bones of hesitance -
And I have watched you grow.
I birthed this side of you,
Fed and watered this place we have come to call ‘now.’
We love and resent in breath’s conjoined,
Picking and peeling a scab that is determined to remain,

stubborn,

tough,

and hanging on by the skin of it’s –
well,
skin. 

Cue: teeth-grinding confusion and saltwater rivers.
Sleepless nights – me
Exhausted slumbers – you.
How do you give so easily
Only to leave me...what?
Angry and wide eyed in a bed that feels not-ours.
Paradox becomes us - we embrace it’s muddled grasp,
Honoured by the call of a yo-yo existence,
And chained to the stories we’ve told.

What are we
if not
what
we have come
to believe?