Poetry & Eggs

Notes on overwhelm, essentials, and love

January does what it does and tries to destroy you. Everything piles on. The piles around you grow, too: the TBR stacks, the laundry bags of stained sleeves and pant legs jutting out at different angles, the clickbaity tabs and work files open on your laptop screen, the unopened bills and tax forms collecting dust on your desk. These clustered objects and obligations are remnants of your life, and there are so many of them now. You start to become overwhelmed by the excess: It’s all going to topple over.

And so what if it does? You think about how it feels to fall and the unbridled pain and promise that follows.

As it happens, you fall a lot in January, literally and figuratively. When the day doesn’t catch you, you sink to the ground. You clutch your stubbed toe or bruised knee or broken heart, but somehow you feel more grounded. You are now eye-level with what is essential, which is to say, all of those things around you don’t seem as daunting or urgent as you once made them out to be.

Then it’s February. You rise and shine and sulk. Sometimes you go out with people you like and love. On a particularly memorable outing, you carry a newly acquired used book that you don’t need but want. You carry scrambled eggs and mashed avocado in your belly. You carry the load of living, leaning to one side slightly because of your bag and baggage. The wind whips your face, and tears run down your cheeks. Despite the frigid temperatures and the days-long streak of no sunshine—and mounting uncertainties—you’re having a great day. You tell this to your husband, and he replies, “Poetry and eggs. I mean, that’s a perfect day.”

You smile because you know there are no perfect days, just perfect storms: a swirl of circumstances and chance encounters that accumulate until 24 hours have passed and you’ve aged just a little more. You read a sentence, take a bite, and feel it fully: The piles inside you growing against the walls of your flesh and bones, pushing you to stand tall.

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If Valentine’s Day isn’t your thing, consider a few ordinary things to love:

1. The weights of a hug: burrowing your chin in their neck, throwing your arm limply over their shoulder, hugging without ever touching—sideways, with your eyes, toothy with your smile.

2. Handwritten postcards and letters—to others and to yourself.

3. When your pet trusts you enough to close their eyes in your presence or let you hold their little paw in your hand.

4. Street adornments: sidewalk chalk drawings, stickers or event posters tacked on buildings and doors.

5. Reading a particular word or phrase and then seeing it everywhere, especially in the most unlikely places.

6. Comfortable silence in the presence of a loved one.

7. The unexpected swell of emotion following a poignant instrumental track, like “Your Hand in Mine” by Explosions in the Sky.

8. When someone tells you to stop apologizing for everything because you have nothing to be sorry for. (Really, they mean it!)

9. Sweet foods with pastel palettes: pinky peaches, buttery yellows, and pistachio greens.

10. The way light changes throughout the years and landscapes.

11. Solo dates—or days—spent indulging in what you love without interruption.

12. The first smile after a long, hard cry.

13. Waiting longer than you expected—for a person, the bus, a dream—and being okay with the pace.

14. Unlikely pairings: you and your partner’s worn-out slippers askew but still next to each other; two different flowers whose stems are interlocked in a bouquet; when one side of the street is shaded and the other in full sun; poetry and eggs: two things to chew on in vastly different ways.

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For Your Next Chapter 

If you enjoyed this slow story, here are a couple of others that might slow your scroll:

“What About Winter?” by yours truly

Slow seasons come and go, but I always try to reflect on where I am in the middle of it all. I recently meditated on the “win” in winter (and about the season in general) for Coveteur—and asked

Jacqueline’s Substack

LaTonya Yvette

,

Jezz Chung

, and

Lyn Slater

to also share their thoughts.

A Piece of Good News: Poems by Katie Peterson

I came across this collection while recently browsing my favorite used bookshop, Troubled Sleep. I’ll admit that the cover intrigued me first, but as soon as I dove into Peterson’s words, I was reminded that poetry comes in all shapes and sizes. This gorgeous collection is an ode to everyday sensations and occurrences: grief, love, modern personhood. I’m adding her recently-published book Fog and Smoke to my list (read: piles)!