Egg Vivo Open Air Market showcases eggs ranging from Grade B to Fabergé. Egg whites slicken floors behind displays. Old yolk encrusts chipped fingernails of irritable vendors. There are eggs whose yolks one might spin into gold, lettered eggs with sapphire eyes which their mothers tell them to pawn should they ever get desperate. Most of the eggs can guess their own worth based on casual conversations they have overheard. The gold-yoked, lettered, sapphire-eyed eggs are worth an extra five grand, at least. Couples who remotely resemble these eggs cradle them, look admiringly at their credentials, shell out big bucks, take them home and make what they call miracles. Some brown-shelled, exotic eggs have chestnut and coffee bean eyes. Their mothers, who secretly speak dead languages with no words meaning desperation, don't know what to tell them.
Lindsey Loberg is a literacy instructor, amatuer ecologist, bicycle enthusiast, and Milwaukee native.
