Eggs by Paul McDonald

Smoking at the breakfast table seems wrong, but he does it, despite her complaints. He promised her he’d quit, as she did years ago, but he never delivers. 

She observes his fag as it smoulders in the ashtray: it points at his empty seat, poised for his return from the loo. It’s too close to the kitchen and she flinches to hear him. Pissing within earshot also seems wrong, and she wishes he’d aim at the bowl, not the water. She wanted more from her marriage.

She lifts his fag, weightless and warm in her fingers. The urge to take a drag begins as a flutter in her guts, rising with a force that shocks her. Soon she’s sucking hard on the damp beige filter, wincing with the bite of the smoke. It’s her first in a decade.

She blows a grey fog across the graveyard plates, spooned-out eggshells like scooped skulls. Her temples buzz with a light-headed high, and memories: her reckless twenties, no worries of the future, delicious first fags of the endless days.

Even as she smokes she’s disgusted with herself, yet she takes another greedy draw, exhales across the shells, their broken hollows. It doesn’t make her queasy as she hoped it would.

Hurried by the break in his stream, his flush, his splashes at the sink, she sneaks another puff, then returns his fag to the ashtray. Again her tummy flutters: perhaps it’s the smoke, perhaps it’s the knowledge that she’ll soon start again, and never have a reason to quit.

Paul McDonald is the author of over twenty books, covering fiction, poetry, and scholarship. His most recent books are: Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic (2020), Don’t Use the Phone: What Poets Can Learn From Books (2023), and 60 Poems (2023).

Paul McDonald’s Amazon Page

Smoke Background Stock photos by Vecteezy

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