Egg Hunt

Perhaps she is not a hypocrite, nor wavering in the wind, but resetting a vision based on an ever-changing reality. She wades in the stillness, gently churning memories, kindly caressing the possibility that she is still collecting pieces of who she wants to be. Like little girls in lacey shifts on Easter morn, searching for colorful eggs in the grass. Their radiating smiles and high pitched laughter, not the product of knowing what the eggs contain, but quite the contrary. They are driven by the mystery within. Perhaps the eggs hold candy, change, or even a tiny ring, plastic of course, but no less beautiful than their mothers’ Tiffany bands. Grass stained stockings, tousled curls and frayed hems, all sacrifices made to fill their little straw baskets…

If only the secrets she conceals could fit in tiny pink and lavender shells…

And other times, she is found savagely dismantling the woman she vigilantly constructed, rebuilding the ashes into new visions, entirely obtrusive and unfamiliar. After all, Rome, nor her identity were built in a day. But fluctuations, both subtle and severe, of visions once fiercely embraced, cast shadows where she treads. Bumps and bruises on her knees, not covered by her slip, are evidence that her journey was not smooth. And now she finds herself haunted by things she once valued, unable to escape the guilt from casting them from her conscience.

And she is a mosaic, not a smooth and seamless vase. Her character is the effect of that who she strives to be, she who cannot be erased, and present impulsions that detract from any consistency.

Is this a sign of a healthy and flexible mind, or is she just mad? Is every day evidence of a change of heart or is she returning to her inescapable self? The paint beneath her nails, the smudge of charcoal on her cheek, all suggest that she never left her former self behind. It seeps to the surface. So perhaps, as she trudges through the brush, madly searching for the golden egg, she seeks not a mystery, but permission to return to fancies long abandoned, for fear they had no place in her tomorrow.