soft-boiled by Joshua Ip
i burn the toast while reading old love letters
but the eggs are fine. to be sixteen,
when someone squeezes juice for you, perfects a
runny egg for you, spreads margarine
on toast for your convenience, leaves time
to idly ooze your prose across a page.
my sixteen self sopped up the sweetest lines
and sent back stacks of syrup-sogged précis,
but i’m still reading this over my brunch.
between being and becoming, there’s a place
familiar, a pleasure in the mush
between the firm and flowing - in the taste
of love soft-boiled, six minutes, surface-deep
in doneness, raw at heart, and young in heat.
