What’s Cracked Can be Ignored, What’s Broken Cannot

The plates on the table are mismatched –
a set of three robin’s eggs
and a fourth; hatching.
You glance at the crack,
a tail of an injury we can ignore, have ignored
with a drift of the eyes, a well-placed finger,
since the day you dropped it.
“Didn’t we have a decent set,
“the perfect kind, for company?” “No.”
“No,” I say. “Not anymore.”
You nod your head, and turn aside,
the matter forgotten again.