Frances-Ann Norton: Poetry

Blackbird Egg

Time slows down in the Victorian mirror.

She is haunted by every face that checked themselves in the glass.

She is on the cusp.

A life about to begin in earnest, on the tipping point of adulthood.

On the apex of future relationships, sexuality and desire.

“Yes” she says, “that’s me in the mirror”, long brown hair, grey-blue eyes.

She is just an ordinary brown bird.

But common or garden blackbirds create sky eggs,

objects of beauty and desire.

Each one speckled slightly differently in the genus.

If only she can create of herself such an object of yearning,

her small brownness will be worth the transformation.

On the Hall-stand crafted in a grand antique style,

are a collection of blackbird’s eggs.

Saved in small glass containers with their lids tight shut.

Through the glass she sees pale blue specked eggs,

broken with raggedy edges.

The armoire ominously overshadows her slight fourteen year old self.

Whom she sees reflected back in multiple mirrors,

framed in the warm gleam of conker wood.

The blue grey of the eggs next to the smoky topaz of her eyes.

This almirah holds years of collected cult objects.

Time moves in and out of the refracted rainbows

in the bevelled mirrors in fragmented reflections.

Her fourteen year old self is still there doing her own haunting.

Glimpsed at times in the mirror behind the spiral column.

Holding a blue egg up to her eye.

Waiting to begin.

First published in Swordplay zine - Apex issue. https://swordplayzine.gumroad.com/