I know a lot less than I used to.
No, that's not true.
I actually know more.
Wait, I don't think that's accurate either.
What I know now is different than what I knew before.
Before what? Before kids, I guess. My world narrowed so much when one was born, and then another, and then another, and yet one more still. It narrowed all the way down to the walls of this house.
Please don't practice pliés while I'm wiping your butt.
I can't believe I just said that.
If you can't wait patiently for your turn I'll just throw it in the trash
and you won't use it at all.
I said that, too.
My world narrows further still, and sometimes all I can consider is everything inside the boundary of my own body.
A mind that bounces off the walls of an eternal to-do list, pockets of tension around this annoyance and that frustration, cells boiling over from too much noise too much activity or -- imploding into absence of meaningful conversation.
Sometimes I think this narrowing is sad. Sometimes I see it as selfish.
But I also know this:
I am a whole universe. There are galaxies flung in every direction, distant stars bound together by unseen fibers stretched across the space between a breath, life burgeoning on blue-white planets, completely [or partially] undiscovered.
So there's another dimension to this narrowing: it is an expansion, too.
A flower blooming inside out,
petals unfurling into darkness,
growing toward a single point of light that is not as far away
as it might
first
appear.
