Eggs Within Eggs

by Will McClelland

Arizona State University

Will McClelland is an undergraduate at Arizona State University majoring in creative writing. He will graduate in December 2026. He is a bookseller at a local independent bookstore, which has become a common topic of his writing. The goal of his writing is to show there is something profound in every moment if we look deeply, even if that moment is as seemingly boring as working the register on a slow night. 

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Cry for the questing head  
of the creeping devil cactus  
who knows living means 
leaving himself behind.  

Cry for clocks, scarred hands who cry 
for peace.  

Cry for the snake 
coiled on the carpet  
on his first lonely night  
in Eden.  

Cry for the stag, headlights that cry 
like sunrise. 

Cry for the hatchling  
furiously swimming upstream  
as he’s swept from his birth waters.  

Cry for wrung-out Ouroboros, boys who cry 
for the love the world called a gag.  

Cry for the question marks 
that boys are taught to hammer flat 
and store in a quiver 
under their tongues.  

Cry for the Nightjar 
who wakes from overdose 
not knowing if it is time  
to sing or to sleep.  

Cry for the sundial 
who saw his son swept away  
by the thin dark wedge  
of his passing.  

Cry for his son, men who do not cry 
while they break the world  
that broke them.  

Cry with your son, let myself cry 
like a robin egg cracking 
on my flat palm: eggs within eggs 

within eggs—some boys 
spend generations breaking 
until they’re born to a palm  
brave enough to be gentle. 

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