Breakfast

Breakfast. There is an art to a fried egg. As a child I would demand that the white was burnt to a raffia mat and that the yellow was left inexplicably raw. And this is still how I crave them. The uncertainty of someone else cracking one into a frying pan is sometimes too much for me to tolerate. I have to leave the room. I have to calm down. I don't want to see the yolk being drowned in spoonfuls of oil. Or the white swimming across the teflon. I don't want to silently witness its body turning to rubber whilst its head is smacked down with the euphemistic and bullying cry of sunnysidedown.

And it was scrambled eggs that I craved when doped on Morphine in an adolescent hospital bed. Buttered and loose eggs. Gentle pale juice seeping into roughly cut bread. And lots of salt. My sister always knew how to add the right amount; she'd shake her arm freely over the pan. And whilst I lay amongst the beeps and groans of NHS fittings, I'd think of her in the kitchen next to the laminate cupboards and woodchip. Her body bent over the dark void where wooden spoons would fall, never to be returned.