breaking egg shells

Edith laughed, almost dropping the Mason jar she was carrying under her arm, as the cat tumbled off the high, wooden beam chasing his moth. She bit her tongue, cutting the laugh short, and gasped at the sudden taste of blood in her mouth.
Summer was peeking its round, sweaty face through the thin windows of the Blue House in the Gully and yearly cleaning was in full swing. The cat provided company while Edith searched the Blue House for bits of trash and scrap to make ornaments. She stood at the top of a skinny ladder, her stick figure legs wobbling as she reached towards the swollen rafters. Edith grimaced. She swallowed the blood, feeling the cut pucker its lips, and braced herself for the sound that came like a small gunshot as she smashed the mason jar against the wall. The large fragments made beautiful additions, she thought as she super glued them to the panes of the high windows; the light filtered into broken, poetic pieces.
The cat meowed loudly, tip-tapping up the rungs of the ladder to wind himself around her thin shoulders, purring and meowing in odd, disjointed hiccups.
“Yes,” Edith said, “Yes, yes, and yes.”
She stepped cautiously down, the cat still clutching at her neck, and headed to the kitchen. Delicately, she pulled the three-legged stool from under the counter and perched herself atop its flat, wooden face. Careful not to look down, she reached her thin, white arm deep into the cabinet’s bloated bowels, extracting an unopened can of cat food. The cat cried and screamed, spinning in circles on the countertop. Edith placed the can next to the sink, climbing down with slow, practiced motions. She pulled the can opener from the drawer, nervously assessing its tiny teeth.
Once the cat was fed, she thought it would be best to take out the trash bags that had accumulated from her cleaning. Edith, unable to carry all three of them by herself, struggled to lift the bags one by one into the wheelbarrow on the porch. She brought them to the end of the winding driveway, discarding them behind the dumpster which she assumed must be for her own personal use; the trash she left disappeared on a rather predictable schedule.
A terrible cramping pain erupted suddenly from her gut. Edith gasped, waiting for it to subside. A monster sunk his teeth into her organs, gnawing and biting and refusing to let go until she sat down in the wheelbarrow. She stood, panting to catch her breath, watching the dark cloud in front of her vision suspiciously, making sure it faded completely before she moved again. Edith grasped both handles of the wheelbarrow and walked it carefully down the hill.






There is no meaning behind this; it's really just a life.