From the basket they fall, with no soft blade to stop the cracks.
They leak, spill - a puddle of eggy innards, coagulating.

Some break in two with no hope of repair. Gone.
Some, perhaps, you can fix.
Perhaps if you stick the pieces together just right -

And you keep walking in that same spot.
Foot next to foot, tiptoeing over the spillage.
Crunch.

Sorry. So sorry - you don't mean to.
Yet you keep walking.

Night falls. The sun rises.
You could clean up the wreckage, but you keep trying.
That one egg that didn't crack all the way.
Sealed with hope, held under rainbows.

At some point, you stop calling it an accident.
You call it a path.
Worn smooth by your apologies.

Eggshells only cease to matter
when you stop walking over them.
Their insides sink into the ground.
Scavengers take their share.
The rest rots.

Do you tend a rotten egg?
Or do you let it go?

Eggshells stop being your eggshells
when you sweep them away -
when you stop worrying instead of sleeping -
when you stop returning to that spot just to hear the shatter.
If you could only fix the cracks completely -
you never will.

And when they are gone,
when you forget where they ever were,
you breathe at last.

Penned by my hand on the 2nd of Aeguary, in the year 996 AF.