a spiral of uncertainty - title unknown

 we were there, in that basement laboratory, together,

you were with me then, in utero, traveling with me, 

we lifted the dies off  the pressure cell and peered down

through the microscope at the brilliant red crystals that bloomed

forth from an amorphous orange cylinder.

We had done science, together.

we were there together, and then you separated from me,

our paths careening crazily, adjacent, but separate,

the separateness of thirty years, of course, we had our own paths

and I never seemed to see you, we never saw each other

until I looked down the spiral of time and you were back there,

in that same building, 

and you were doing science, but without me.

I had moved on up the spiral

looking for my own mother, who was maybe looking down at

me and wondering how we had become so separate.

we never circled round, my mother and me, the spiral never

collapsed in love, daughter, will our spirals ever touch again

in the molten embers of those brilliant red crystals.