'Thirty seconds after you get on the train' by Philippa Bowe

my smile, my fingers and thumbs shaping a heart, my mama’s-fine-baby mask shredded, sliced, knife to my belly, no, not my belly, my womb, pain so sharp I want to double over like I did 24 years ago when the first contraction struck, extreme weather event tearing inside me, ten hours of ripping agony that brought you into the world, agony to sweetness, heart-bursting joy at your arrival, and here we are now, at your departure, the voice of the passengers bouncing off iron girders, you in the carriage with your mates shrugging off your giant backpack, grinning your face off, head already in tropical places with heat and mangos and new languages, I shrug off the pain and grin too, and know I must wait for the seismic shift to settle, know five months can be the shortest time or the longest time, know I can’t know which it’ll be.