My mother has been waiting for something to hatch.
Her clipped wings, her circling brain.  
I was her idea, once, she says.

A shell she held to the lamp,
her warm yellow,
her thick albumin.  

My flutter cast shadows
that she craved,
a place she could hide.
Instead, I emerged incandescent.
My mother exhaled and released me.  

Three seasons later, I returned to find her
shivering beneath antiseptic fluorescent buzz.
I held her to the lamp.  

She was my idea once, too.
My best shell, broken.
My warm yellow, my sick albumin.