Expansion and Contraction

In the beginning,
I lived in a womb.
That is how small
my world once was.
When I stretched that place
to its limit,
I was born.

My world has been
an expanding circle ever since,
always growing
to encompass a little more
beauty and pain.
Beauty and pain.

The circle of my mother’s world,
by the time she died
at ninety-five,
had contracted back
to a womb
of sorts.

She fought it initially
but eventually seemed content
to receive news of the world
filtered through us,
her children.

We, for our part,
understood instinctively
to share with her
only the beauty,
keeping the pain
to ourselves.

By Maria Brady-Smith
Photo by Mike Smith