My Father's Breakfast

After his first heart attack my father

gave up bacon, butter, cream and cheese.

Mornings he ate dry toast, black coffee

and a boiled egg because eggs,

he knew, were good for the heart.

I'd watch him slice the egg

dead center with his steak knife,

hold the two halves carefully

while orange life spilled into his bowl.

He cleaned the white meat

from the shell like a surgeon who knows

each gesture counts. He performed this ritual

alone, his eyes alert and bargaining.

Each day he shrank, the egg

grew larger in his delicate hands

until he was nearly hidden

behind the opaque world whose secrets

he would devour.

It's just an egg, I said, in case

the egg wouldn't keep him here,

but he smiled such sorrow at me, his only

child, that I began to understand

the fragile mystery of skin like a shell

holding, hiding

blood, thoughts, laughter and a thousand

terrors, unborn children.

Break us and love pours out,

or tiny prayers with their fingers crossed,

or hunger when our only father

has finally disappeared.

Published in Sycamore Review