LITERATURE
HOPE DERIVED FROM A CHICKEN EGG by Daphne Soriano 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.
Artwork by Mizuki Hosokawa