Megan Roberts

the waves of contractions
the depth of your breath,
the head emerging.
I don’t know any of that.

I do know about the point
when pain meets pleasure,
the point where joy and sorrow touch
like twins, back-to-back in the womb,
the point when dark and light become shadows
of one another and neither is clear, or even visible.

I do not know, but I believe
you will reach a place in birth,
and it’s the meeting of everything:
supreme beauty and raw pain,
soft hair and strong shoulders,
the surface and the underbelly,
connection and separation,
and your mind isn’t sure which is which
in that elongated moment, trying
to pick between what it sees as opposites,
but your body, your wise body,
knows enough.