THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG
I.
Mama made me breakfast this morning—she told me she was making me an omelette. She cracked two fat eggs in a blue china bowl, their smooth shells shattering like drywall. Out of the shells dropped two chunky pulps- embryos, tiny and bony, all claw and beak. They crunched as she whisked them, blood and yolk with butter and salt over medium heat. Very delicious. She placed the plate in front of me and I didn’t know what to do. I sat and stared at her and she stared at me and I stared at the plate and a tiny chicken eyeball stared back at me. She beckoned. I ate. I was hungry and I felt bad that she had gone through all this work and I was an ungrateful daughter. I felt tiny claws scrape down my throat as I swallowed, but nothing in the world could have made me stop. At the end of the day, it really is just cooked chicken, I told myself. My stomach churned with sick and I was gagging, but mama made me breakfast this morning and, goddamnit, I was going to eat all of it.
II.
I spent the second half of the morning over the toilet, vomiting. Mucousy, sour chunks of egg and cartilage bubbled up my throat, and the stench of blood and bile filled my nostrils. I held the bowl desperately, like I would slip away like a sheet in the wind if I didn’t keep my grip. I stormed upstairs to mama and spat acrid saliva at her feet, and she shouted at me for ruining her house slippers. Then I shouted at her for ruining my breakfast. And then she screamed at me for ruining her career. And then I screamed at her for ruining my childhood. I emptied the remaining contents of my stomach onto the kitchen floor and made her clean it up, while she squawked at me for squandering the sacrifices she made. Then we sat on the freshly-cleaned floor and cried together, and I forgot who was who.
Ainsley Louie-Suntjens, 20, Moh’kinstsis/Durham ✯ IG: @ainsley.exe & TWT: @ainsley.exeee ✯ BACK TO POETRY: OUROBOROS
“My name is Ainsley Louie-Suntjens. I’m 20 years old. I'm in my fourth year of an undergraduate in English and History at the University of Calgary, but I am currently doing a year abroad at Durham University in the UK. I write about being a woman, being Chinese, being terrorized and horrified, dressing up and eating. In my free time, I love to dance, draw, paint and go thrift-shopping.”