On Eggshells

On Eggshells

Whether you walk on eggshells
or stomp on them, you will
trample them. To compile
a pound of eggshells, you would
need six hundred twenty-five
empties. Tiptoes and caution
still shatter calcium carbonate.
Anyway, they were made to
be broken. You are noisy
even when you are silent,
the world is dripping with
Do Not Disturb signs in
languages we don’t even
recognize as languages.
As a hearing aid with the
volume cranked lets out
a squeal, you are loud
because you are here.