The Pin
I remembered the pin from long ago
It’s the size of a pin —
the ultrasound technician explained.
I imagined a colored one,
like those that poked out of the pincushion princess
who stood on the lacquered coffee table
at my babysitter’s house.
They were red and blue and pink and yellow;
they stood side by side, waiting their turn to be pulled out, and poked into
the little squares of gingham fabric which would grow up to become
a quilt for December’s PTA auction.
My favorite was flowered with speckles of pink
set against a whole-wheat background,
a 1970’s brown I never cared for,
until I found it, by chance,
in your eyes.
I’m sure our pin would have had the same brown eyes.
Except the choice was mine; but not mine
when the timing was all wrong
for my belly to bulge, full and round
with a maybe brown-eyed babe.
If only the technician could have seen more
than just the pin; a scan of the future, perhaps;
mine, yours.
She could have warned us that
after I said “No” to the pin in my belly -we’re not ready
we would part ways with
the same words.
Maybe she could have seen
that after the tiny pulse stopped,
along with the taste of sour Pepsi and early-morning saltine crackers,
and breakfast, lunch, and dinner returned to what it was before,
I would be alone with an empty uterus and an empty bed.
Finally, five years later, the time was right, and
today, we both have a brown-eyed babe to hold,
except we’re married to
someone else.
I discovered this last week driving past the park.
After, I stopped at an estate sale where,
digging through a cardboard box,
I found a faded pincushion and
a row of tiny little pins.
I remembered the pin from long ago; part you, part me, and
I gave the lady a quarter.
Then, with the memory tucked safe in my palm of my hands,
I carried the colored pin home
