What do you have for lunch the day your hero dies?

Photo credit Wake Forest University

What do you have for lunch

the day your hero dies?

May 28, 2014

You settle on a hard boiled egg.

Smack the brown shell against the counter top.

Crunch its sharp bits beneath your finger tips.

Yes, Maya must have one day
eaten a hard boiled egg.

She must have felt the smooth curve

of the white in her hand.

She must have spread it open
the white, then two halves of the inside sun

and eaten them with salt.

But today it is you
eating the egg,

you taking each bite slow
you becoming the woman you will be

without Maya.

Thinking this

you look across the mountain

of breakfast dishes

still in the sink.

At noon, a heap of tiny

failures.

What will you do now

that she is gone?

First things first.

You will get the dishes done.

You wipe every bit of

crumb and scum out.

You stack the load neatly

and start the cycle.

Then you look out the window

to the green trees

illuminated

And beg pray promise her, 
Maya, that you will try

in your however small way

to continue her work

to say the thing that cannot be said

and get up the next morning

to rise.

***

And Still I Rise, by Maya Angelou