i

Grandmother Julia’s cooking eggs in her Pullman kitchen,
soft-cooked, for my darling, she says, words from crevices
inside her tidy heart—so private, so open, her slender frame,
long neck inclined over eggs spooned from their shells
as though (years later I would call it courting), as though
in some natural act. But I am six and this is spongy ground.
Here’s a woman: voice and body as if naked.
Unadorned. In the act of loving. I, who only know
to skip a stone on Great Pond, to belly flop downhill
on my sled. Julia cracks the shells, delicately scoops
the eggs, yolks unbroken, into the paper-thin
Haviland cup flowered pink and green, presents it
to Granddaddy. An offering from her porcelain hands.
His birthright. I have seen him smile a kingly smile for this.

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