literature

House of a Broken Egg

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TheGlassIris's avatar
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Literature Text

The gentlest song I know
is the one about a broken egg.
The one that goes,
“Humpty-Dumpty”
sat on a wall
“Humpty-Dumpty”
had a great fall…
And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
couldn’t put Humpty back together again.

It was an accident wasn’t it?
Just a sheer and mistaken lapse
in judgment, his foot
slipping just a few centimeters too wide, his arms
an inch away from righting himself
and, what I love most about this song,
is how simple a tragedy,
how senseless an accident can be.

I don’t need to know anything.
Not the names, not the place,
nor the time, manner in which he’s fallen,
et cetera. It
was just an accident, one
in which he does not recover, ever.

The gentlest song I know
is this one, because
of how aware it is
of the senseless and silent
nature of the world.
How easily something breaks,
how hard it is to mend,
and how sometimes, just sometimes,
we cannot avoid being hurt
and broken because of it.

And I wondered to myself once,
hearing this song again, for the first time.
How did Humpty
go on with his life?
Did he die? Afraid of what the ground would render
to his thin, poorly-reinforced,
and infinitely fragile exterior?
Did he live and go on?
Collapsing with memory-reinforced agony
every time he sees that wall,
that, once holding him up,
now tumbles him down.
And through his cracked
bleeding-yolk face,
we see a semblance of recollection
even through all that pain.

What did he do after “the accident”?
I imagine the answer we come up with
tells more about our own stories
than his.

For me, Humpty did die.
For a moment, surrounded
by people he didn’t know.
The weird horses pawing his shell,
fragmented in the gloved arms
of almost-faceless, blurry men,
I think he did die. For a moment,
and then came back to life again.

It was no miracle. It was no profound awakening.
Just, life.
It was sudden, an accident,
like waking up
or falling off a wall and Humpty,
Humpty must’ve have thought for a moment
what a mistake. And I would think
what is death, but an image?
Superimposed on the end of our lives,
never really real until
the brief, subtle,
screaming end.

He must’ve woken up
after being shattered, gone on
to thank the king and his men as best he could,
apologize for his mistake
and left for the wall, again
and break.

He must’ve thought for a moment
the image of himself so eager, so young,
five minutes ago, five years ago,
the way a nursery rhyme is never forgotten,
the way a scar or crack shows up
later in life,
the way memory and trauma resurface,
the way our lives can break in countless ways
almost whole before it touches the floor.

And at some point after this
he must have been afraid.
He must have gone on walking,
shivering
(just a little)
a single crack visible on the surface
slowly fading
like a memory.
Written after driving to school. I got the first draft down, didn't know how to end it, screwed around with it a little (putting it off for weeks, forgetting about it), then finally found it again, gave it a proper title, reattached the ending with one I liked, and wrote this description.

For :iconwritingcritiques:

Summary: A young adult reflects upon the nursery rhyme they heard in childhood.
Genre: Fairytale-Grimmification Poetry
Critique Tolerance: 5-Witch Burning-I expect competency at the least and something truly insightful so I'll take everything being offered.
Critique Questions:
1. What can be cut?
2. What can be clarified?
3. What could be elaborated on?
4. Where does the piece get interesting?
5. Where, boring?
6. Elaborate. Why? How? Suggest anything. Consider any possibility for revision.
© 2013 - 2024 TheGlassIris
Comments2
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brietta-a-m-f's avatar
I don't even know what to say. Poetry rarely leaves me speechless like this. Lovely!