How to Break An Egg Yolk
Abby Masucol
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- Visit the supermarket.
- Buy a carton of eggs. Just that—nothing else.
- Supermarkets are designed to overstimulate the senses; the lights are too bright.
Too many people around. - Shopping carts have broken wheels. Endless meat options.
- By the end of the day, all that’s left is bad fruit.
- Egg cartons are made with either cardboard or plastic. The plastic breaks easily.
The cardboard smells funny when wet. - The store’s population depends on the time of day. Or night. At night, the birds chirp louder.
- Do you hear them now?
- Birds lay eggs because their babies are too heavy to fly around with.
- Imagine a bird flying until it gives up, because she forgot to lay her eggs.
- Evolution doesn’t work like that.
- After you buy the egg carton, put it in the fridge.
- Open the carton—make sure it doesn’t squeak!—and take a single egg.
- Hold it. Caress it.
- If the farmers didn’t take it from the hen, the egg would be a chicken now…
- …unless it was unfertilized.
- Obviously, eggs in supermarkets are unfertilized.
- Mother hens lay eggs without knowing if they’ll hatch. They just hope it does, eventually.
- If hens sit on empty nests long enough, they become broody. The same goes for humans.
- Pet the egg’s shell.
- Do you feel its surface? Wet and slick from your body heat.
- Dogs hold eggs in their mouths. They’re careful with it; they know, somehow, the egg will crack if they bite hard enough.
- Would the dog even touch an egg if he knew a baby was growing inside it?
- Hold the egg in one hand and go to the nearest table.
- Hit the egg—softly—against its edge.
- Then again.
- One more time.
- Discard the egg white.
- Hold one half of the shell above the sink.
- Drop the egg white inside.
- CAREFUL! The yolk is fragile; don’t break it.
- If you do, it will run, run, run down your hand. Cold, yellow pus dripping down your arm.
- Lick it.
- Smile and laugh.
- Wash your hands.
- Repeat.
Abby Masucol (she/her) is a Filipino writer from the Chicago suburbs. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Montage Arts Journal and Poetry as Promised. When she’s not writing, she collects prints and ponders the meaning of life. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram @abbytama_.