Becoming a Thunderegg
By Mary Frye
Childhood unfolded like some convoluted opera, my father Count di Luna from Verdi’s, Il trovatore, going to whatever lengths to gain his ends. I shrunk, withered, hibernated, my sister went AWOL, while brothers beat their chests, went to battle. Molested me. My dark burrow became my skin, insulating and hardening around me. When a rare revolt marched forth from my body, a nonverbal destructive spleen, the released grenade startled then froze all life, all sound, so unexpected my discharge. Childhood, adolescence in captivity, acquiescing to the existence at hand, becoming a thunderegg, my rock exterior impenetrable, ugly with environmental deposits of should, could, be this, be that, think this, feel that. Pockmarked with guilt, incest, a dearth of careful handling. Creators, later packed into a different earth strata, doomed a gray stone to another era mired in Southern red clay accepting the surrounding earth, blinded to the splendor of the egg inside.