The Pale Blue Egg

This was for a social studies class I'm taking, which is why it's full of citations. I highly recommend the documentary 13th . It's on Netflix and well worth the watch.                      I have had the same argument with my dad a couple of times about the reasons why the Civil War was fought. In the simplest of terms, I always say it was because of slavery, and he claims economics. I think now that we’re both right, but only because slavery was an economic issue. People needed to profit, and the quickest way to increase this was to spend less on labor. That’s why our country stomached the atrocity of human bondage for as long as it did--for profit. I saw this reappear in Douglas Blackmon’s (2008) Slavery by Another Name . When slavery ended, Americans needed a new source for cheap labor, so we invented convict leasing. And it’s happening right now in America again. Ava DuVernay’s (2016) 13th not only told us this, but al...

    The women in my family are not early risers. We also don’t like to sweat all that much. So if there’s anything we want to do outside in the summer, we face a real conundrum. It’s not that much cooler or less humid in the mornings than midday, but the sun is dimmer so it feels less like hell.     Growing up, my mom would take us to this pick your own blueberry farm about 15 minutes from our house. We would beg and beg and beg to each pick our own gallon (which was six dollars , y’all). My mom would tell us that was too many blueberries, but we would get our way. I would eat the hot, sun-cooked berries right off the bush. And then I would eat my whole gallon by myself over the next couple of days and shit purple for a week.     My sister and I are both home for a couple of weeks this summer. We got ourselves out of bed at a quarter to 7 this morning to go pick our own gallons. Our mom begs and begs and begs us to just split a gall...

    I’ve been an honest-to-God vegetarian a couple of times, the first when I was 5. While the more recent times have come about after documentaries and books, this first time is a little harder to explain.     We’re in our second house in Florida, and there’s a raw chicken on the counter, perched with a beer can up its ass, waiting for the grill. I am horrified--chickens shouldn’t look like this. Pure terror when I connect the dots between this bumpy flesh and my McDonald’s chicken nuggets. I probably complain about this too much. I really do have this way of overdoing it sometimes.     My mom picks up the chicken, makes it flap its wings. I don’t think she quite gets the reaction she wants. So she decides to chase me around the house with it, making chicken noises.     (Looking back, trying to not make this sound like child abuse, she was probably just fed up, upset I was ruining the dinner she was putting a lot of wor...

    Before I moved in with C, I didn’t understand what it meant to live with someone. I’d had lots of roommates in college, even slept in the same room with strangers. But it’s different when it’s every day, when you want to sink into your home, and you’re deeply in love with your roommate.     I want all the lights off, maybe a soft lamp. I want it cold, crank the AC down low. I want to hear only the sound of my own stuff: music, podcast, TV, movie. Use headphones if you want to listen to your shit. I want the sink perpetually empty, I swear to god, if you let the crusty dishes pile up again, I will lose my goddamn mind. I want the dirty laundry in the hamper, food wrappers in the garbage can, leftovers put safely away in the fridge the moment we’re done eating.     Not you. You could give a shit about what goes where. You tell me I live in a cave, cool and dark, and then you turn on all the lights (even in the rooms we’re not in) and c...

My fingers smell like strawberry yogurt, bleach, and mustard. This is because in the last half hour, I have soaked them in strawberry yogurt, bleach, and mustard. I have given myself jalapeño hand, which is the Internet’s cute name for the capsaicin burn you get if you don’t wear a glove while you cut hot peppers. I scoured dozens of websites looking for a cure, and each one begins with the disclaimer that preventatively wearing gloves is the best cure. Fuck. That. Nobody googles this problem before it happens. You either wear gloves or you don’t, and I don’t need this condescension right now, while my hand burns itself off my arm.     Here’s how it happened: I am cooking 4 things at once: Monday’s lunch, chickpeas in the pressure cooker, a tomato and leek quiche, and chickpea and corn fritters. I have too many dishes spread out, too little counter space.     I know that I should wear a glove, but I don’t have any cuts on my hand (I stupidly thi...

ovoid fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelet hollandaise, béarnaise, mayonnaise eggs potential creation beginning brittle shell when a piece falls in dip a wet finger to pull it out velvety vivid yolk nourishing heart crack pretend eggs on my knees and elbows yelling stop then laughing eyes crack open like eggs i crack open like an egg my mythology bleed and spill my guts finally don’t want to lose this cracked open version of me be generous, fight for this cracked open person the world needs stories the world needs your stories the world needs my stories fry me in a pan here i am cracked and ready