Deviled Eggs
Sunlight upon an empty house, as they lay there, pristine, bright red specks atop a cushion of gold surrounded by the eggshell white coating: deviled eggs. Good. Text my mother if it is okay to eat them whilst eating one. She says yes. Take a look at their unintentionally uneven edges, albumen jagged and crooked, yolks not gold but a softer yellow, one you’d see in preschool and sidewalk chalk, and the paprika is less vibrant in the spots of shade, and the everything bagel mix is maybe just a bit too much. We are not supposed to eat these at this hour, 4 in the afternoon, it is meant for hosting dinners or at lunches or with literally anyone else around but no. It is just me in the kitchen, in the house with wide sliding glass doors to let the outside in, kitchen, living room, dining room merged into a theater for the entertainer and an audience. But only I am here, by the counter, by the ordinary china plate that beholds the eggs. And they watch me as they sit there, and they as the spectators observe the feeling present on my face. Maybe I sigh a little.
It is the imperfect perfection that the upper middle class is given, it is the once newly renovated walk-in pantry in which the snacks are over a year old, parties that leave everything a mess, houses that are too big to call home but open enough to let the light shine through. It is not an unpleasant feeling, although not one you’d cozy up to when the windows are open, because your Dad says it’s a night too cold for AC when we have the money for it. It silently asks a question that reverberates the foundation of our abode and echoes long after its moment: how can we afford to afford this? They sit there on the plate, indifferent, yolks in egg whites, egg whites surrounding yolks, like it’s the most pointless question to be asked.
But it’s not.
Because it’s always a beautiful and sad story with melancholic oranges and reds written in between the margins and laced through the footnotes, even when they don’t make sense and contradict each other.
Because it’s home, and despite everything, good deviled eggs.
