We hold our carton and collect up life's praise and petty accomplishments like smooth white eggs to place in each small nesting cardboard compartment, count our little egg-box as we doze or speak. But see how easily they crack, they fall to the floor and the thin shell flakes apart and bleeds with viscous yellow across the tiles of the floor. We clutch them too hard between our palms, drop them to the floor with clumsy drifting, watch as the man sits upon the carton whole (we have left it upon the seat he often takes.)

Photo.