My mother cooks us eggs every morning,
scrambles them up in the pan as if they’re popcorn

kernels, daring them to escape.
Tells me people don’t change—I laugh,

but my father doesn’t look up from the newspaper,
fresh-pressed proof of the world’s explosions

and rebirths. The egg yolks dribble across the pan,
bleeding out yellowed shapes. I am too old not to notice

these things but I’ll pretend for everyone else’s
sake. But doesn’t everyone (and everything) change? 

The shapes form crumpled people—they are running,
running for the edge of the stainless steel, a corner

in their rounded cage to hide in. They are still now,
and still bleeding. Of course, but only if they want to. 

But we never stop running—we haven’t yet felt
the splat of hitting a dead end, the curved edge of a lipped pan.

Maybe watching the yolks bleed and seeing shapes
is no different than looking for clouds shaped like

ourselves, no different than waiting for people to
change when they won’t. So we’ll keep running—