The chick must break through the egg, you tell me. Without the struggle, it won’t live. It’s a law of nature. On day 21 of its close, cloistered life, the chick flexes its pipping muscle and pushes the eggtooth through the membrane that’s held it in a soft glaucous cradle. That’s when you can see the egg pulsate and rock. And then soon a hole, and then a soon a crack. And then–

I don’t know why that part makes me nervous, I tell you. Maybe it’s because you can see the chick–just a splash of yellow feathers throbbing against the ruptured shell–but you don’t know what part you’re looking at. I worry that it can’t breathe. I want to crack the egg open and scoop it out, save it from what seems like panic, a blind broken entry into the world.

But it has to do it on its own, you say. That’s its job. And if it can’t break through, there’s something wrong with it. It probably won’t live if you help it.

I think to that morning, how we’d made love in the weak blue light, so early that my eyes were heavy with sleep. I pressed up against your cool skin, your fingers under my neck and in my hair. In bed, I’ve wanted us to be in a shared dream, though I know we aren’t, and we never have been. You are outside of the dream, and I am inside. I’ve created a small hole in the membrane between us so I see you. I know what we are is both old and new, and what’s new might just swallow the old. We can’t be both anymore.