Something Significant

By J.D. Isip

Like dying. Easter egg vinegar outside douches
lined up in three colors. Primaries. The Father,
the Son, the Holy Ghost. And tiny plastic robes
to slip around the hard boiled circumference
all condom-like with pictures of Saturday morning
cartoons everyone else has forgotten. Pity.
Especially the shell without fissures. The One
congealed to such inner toughness that holding
the solid weight of it is so assuring. How could we
see how every baptism eats away? That the thin
plastic sheaths—pictures of once-loved heroes
or fantasies unimpressive by today’s standard—
were constricting, suffocating. Every beauty
we tried to impart a thorn, a nail, a spear in the side.
In the end, you didn’t make the basket showing.
There was only enough, the bright chalky youth
preserved at the center, to whip with pickles,
mayo, smoked paprika. Load into another plastic
bag and squeeze out into Deviled Eggs. Believe me.
The irony of that name. It is not lost. In the end,
you were.