if this were a sad poem,
i’d write:
the egg i used to make my sunny side up
came from a mother hen
who never got to be with her child.
maybe there is a rule for everyone in the universe:
that for every bad thing that happens, a good thing will arrive,
but i don’t know what good thing that mother hen got from her child being taken.
all i know is that when i got her egg from the fridge,
i had not thought about her.
now i sit, stomach full and heart heavy,
guilty with the knowledge that i have
eaten her child.
i would like to believe that she (if she is even alive) is living a nice life.
i would like to imagine that she is able to roam free,
feeling the warm sunlight and gentle breeze on her feathers.
i will not think about the fact that the egg brand we buy is one of the largest in the country, and that she had probably lived in a pen with a hundred others.
i would like to imagine that she makes happy chicken noises (whatever that may sound like),
and that she sleeps
warm and comfortable.
i would like to imagine that she gets fed plenty,
not just enough to survive and stay alive.
i would like to imagine that she was not exploited,
nor used up into oblivion,
as we take everything,
everything we can from her.
when i started this poem, i had wanted to write about how there is love in the world
despite the cruelty,
despite everything.
but i cannot think of anything good that might have happened to the mother hen.
but still, i will keep going.
maybe in the pen that she lived in with a hundred others,
she got to connect with other mother hens.
maybe they would click their beaks and talk —
talk about the world, their children, about things that ruffle their feathers.
maybe the farm she’s from fed her enough to be healthy and live long,
and the person assigned to her pen
cared a lot about her.
maybe that person would pet the hens in her pen everyday and their voice would get high-pitched like when you’d talk to babies.
maybe there is love and good in the world, like
how maybe she was able to sit on her eggs
and warm them up before they were taken from her.
maybe that was her last act of motherly love.
maybe we just have to believe that the world is good,
because to succumb to hopelessness is to give up.
maybe we should put out the good and love we want into the world.
maybe we are all good and we deserve kindness,
like how i’m trying hard to make this a not-sad poem,
like how i wrote this and shared it with you,
and now i am saying i love you because i can and because it’s true and
maybe we are all not so bad and
i think i really do have hope and love for the world,
despite the cruelty,
despite everything.
maybe the world is cruel,
and yet there is love.
i push it out into the world in hopes that it reaches you and
now there is
so much of it,
despite,
despite,
despite—
despite everything.
the mother hen loved her child,
and so i say i shall, too.
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