You Are What You Eat

so I know you are eggs. Sunny side up, salmonella-scrambled, salsa-slathered, over-hard yellow-white discs fried in bacon grease until the edges curl like wispy brown lace. Your dad was the original egg man, eating five every day, insisting you ate at least three. One slurry night on somebody’s basement couch, you mumbled into my neck that you didn’t even like eggs, just learned to choke them down because it was easier and now you couldn’t stop. I pressed my hand to your chest and felt your heart cracking beneath my palm.

You are what you eat, so I know you are rage. You ate it by the forkful, along with your daily eggs. Your dad sprinkled it like salt all throughout your home; tiny bitter grains that amplified everything: spilled milk, burnt toast, untied shoelaces, lost hats, dead batteries in the remote, Chinese take-out that arrived cold, smart-ass delivery drivers who don’t deserve a fucking tip, gotdamn companies trying to rip him off. You ate so much rage that the taste was constant in your mouth, rising unbidden at the sight of a single burned pepperoni on pizza, a shattered egg spilling its guts on the floor.

You are what you eat, so I know you are my love. I baked it into lemon-poppy muffins, stirred it into chicken soup, slid it into the slow cooker along with pork chops and apples. I thought it could overpower any craving, salve your cracked heart. You consumed it with eyes closed, licked your fingers, but told me everything tasted sour. So I melted it in syrup and poured it over pancakes, infused it in fruit smoothies, tried candying it with roasted pecans. You slammed your fist on the table and asked why can’t I ever just make fucking eggs. I tried to fold it into an omelette but a spoonful of rage fell in instead. You gagged as you ate it; said it was the best thing I’d ever made.