Easter Egg

It’s hard to imagine

The world marching towards its end

When someone has strewn easter eggs

In a grassy field, like an infection

Of pastel chicken pox.

Sure, the candy hidden in their shells

Will raise your cholesterol, perhaps they will

Be the straw that clogs a camel’s arteries.

But the discovery of them,

Peeking through wet grass,

Was enough to make that sad, old camel smile.

And the children! Oh, think

Of the children! Of the world

They will inherit where one lone easter egg

Is forgotten under a non-burning bush

Refusing to break down into the soil

Out of hope that someone will find it.

When does a forgotten easter egg just become

Another piece of plastic weighing down

The world until we –us and the camel–

All sink down together.

I sometimes wonder

How it will all end.

I assume I won’t be here to see it, but that

Easter egg in the bush will, and maybe so will

The young girl who spied the pastel through

The leaves on that first day.

She already had five eggs in her hands.

She thought she would leave it for someone else to find.

No one ever did.

Anyways, the way I see it,

The world could end in one of two ways:

Very Quickly or Very Slowly.

If it takes the second option, it could be

Happening right now. While I’m writing and

You’re reading that cosmic clock has already ticked

Down and is flashing zeros.

Perhaps we're farther along in the process

Than we would like to think.

Perhaps the population will decline gradually

Until one person looks around and realizes

No one else is there.

Perhaps it's the easter egg girl.

Perhaps she’s gone by then, too.

Or maybe it will happen suddenly.

Our unprepared bodies will be strewn

Across continents like fleshy easter eggs

On a lawn that just checked itself

Into rehab.

I wonder what will be left when we are all gone.

How long will it take for the buildings to fall?

For the wooden floors to remember

They used to be trees?

For the animals to forget

How loud we were?

How fast we came and went?

Is the world still the world

If there are no humans to name it?

Is the world still the world

When all that’s left is

Animals and oceans and plants and mountains and fresh air and clean water and a camel with a

bare back walking through a desert and the rubble we left behind becoming an industrial coral

reef and peace,

Peace at last,

And one pastel easter egg,

Waiting below a bush.

Morgan Laidler is a 20-year-old junior at Boston College studying Secondary Education, English, and Creative Writing. She was born in Georgia and then moved to Parkland, Florida, where she began writing poetry and prose. Her work focuses on themes of sentimentality, womanhood, and growing up in Southern America.