A CALMING ART
She’s taken to making hard-boiled eggs. Not every day, just one maybe two for breakfast or brunch – roughly chopped on lightly buttered ciabatta straight from the oven. It centres her. It’s not the making as such but the peeling of shells, and she’s hooked.
Once cooked she holds them for a moment under cold water then just before the ritual begins taps them like a maestro’s baton on the hard-wood surface, every time amazed how their crack and craze is different.
In her silent mindful egg-space she coaxes each piece of casing in almost forensic removal; strips of membrane cling to her fingers, robbed of their egg-white hug; her sense of pleasure oddly immense when larger fragments surrender themselves.
It can’t be rushed, many a time she’s made an impatient crater.
Annie Morris lives in SW London. Her poems have appeared in various online and print publications including Minute Magazine, Allegro Poetry, Red Wolf Journal, The Dawntreader, Snapdragon Journal, Blue Heron Review and the anthology Myth & Metamorphosis (Penteract Press).
