I am this sort of person. The sort of person who is strong most of the time, but one who also has a thin skin.

Things my kids say, off-hand comments that can feel mean, they can cut to the bone. I take things so personally.

Am I really that insecure?

Like the egg my chicken Olive laid yesterday, I am so delicate.

Olive’s egg was no good. It was a tiny, slick, water balloon of mucous and half-formed orange yolk. Inedible, ugly, malformed, a gelid aberration.

Yet it was a weird glimpse inside the workings of the miracle, into the dark place that quivers and hides, one that’s not quite ready for full disclosure.

The egg membrane is like the private soul, and maybe we’re just not accustomed to viewing it so naked, so raw.

But I look at the egg and see the contents of a story, one that iterates a woundedness, or maybe just a vulnerability.

Nevertheless, I see a place deep inside, one that is imprinted with a fear of sunlight.

A me not quite ready to meet the world, a me that is afraid to be seen. A me that is afraid to face the violence of some kind of birth.