The Fold

The towel, still warm from the dryer,

she smoothed it flat on the counter space.

Her hands moved, quick and clean,

a practiced grace.

But the seam,

it wasn't quite the way

my mother made the corner meet,

a different lay.

Not wrong, no,

just foreign to my eye,

a small shift in the pattern,

passing by.

And in that crease,

a quiet, sudden ache,

for all the small ways

we learn to break,

and mend,

and learn again to live

with the new shape

that someone else can give.