The Broken Eggs
I am at Florence Morrison's house for a class she is teaching and she is frying eggs for us--we have to get them from the fridge and bring them to her and she tosses them into the pan--to speed things up. When I go to get mine, the fridge is full of broken brown eggs, and stacks of shells. Everyone else finds eggs, but I find only shells and broken eggs. Florence tells me broken eggs are still good and I say, "remember how I used to have chickens bag then, I know about broken eggs," but I still can't find any that are edible. She tells me I need to hurry and I crawl inside the refrigerator in order to see better. Now, even the cracked ones are gone.
I wake up with images of cracked and broken eggs haunting me. (Broken dreams?)
I feel somehow sad and left out.
I honored the dream by writing that poem, and I ask for dreams of clarification.
I am grateful for
- enough sleep to dream.
- a husband who seems to really love me, in spite of the wretched poem I just wrote about him
- a husband who is handsome and sexy
- the fact that I lost some weight! YAY!
OK, here's the poem I wrote based in part upon the dream:
The Sinking Raft
Slowly, my husband unloves me. He stops
putting the clean laundry in the drawers, then stops
fluffing and folding it. Brings it up and dumps it
in a tangle. Stops greasing my feet, rubbing my back,
making love to me. "I will do everything,"
he said, when he was courting. I dream of Florence,
wife of John, my botany professor. More than forty
years ago, John tried to get me into bed. I refused,
despite his gifts and constant attention, but Katra caved
and fell that long dark fall where you know you'll die
when you hit bottom, and she wasn't dreaming.
Katra didn't die, she became a lesbian, after John.
Who could blame her? And Florence had an unfaithful
husband. I hated John for that. "I'll do everything,"
my husband said. "You can't," I countered.
He tried, but couldn't. Of course
he couldn't. No one could. I can't
do anything. I rarely sleep, stare, zombie-like
at the increasing chaos I can't control
with my exhausted brain and body.
But each time he stops, I see him turning away,
turning his face to the wall, inching toward the farthest
edge of the bed, away from me. He does that, too.
Leaves me in sleep. I leave him, too,
get up and pace the dark for hours, too tired
to be useful. I finally sleep and go
somewhere he's never been, without him.
When I dream of Florence, her refrigerator is full
of broken eggs. She fries eggs for all the women
her husband courts, and everyone gets eggs
but me. But why go back now, forty years later?
Menopause? Dashed hopes, broken dreams?
Is, like John, my husband unfaithful? "Remember
when you used to love me?" I ask my husband.
He tries the same on me. "See how it hurts?"
He clings to me in bed, before he turns away,
clings as to a life-raft in a stormy sea.
I cling to him. We're not unfaithful, only old
and getting daily older.
Mary Taitt
081205-1026-1c; 081205-0945 1st
I'm always making BB sound like a jerk. Actually, I'm the one that's a jerk, probably.
I had a terrible night last night. Did not get to sleep until well after 3:30 AM. When I don't sleep well, everything looks bad to me.
