May 21, 2019

milk ducts

The ultrasound technician and her gluey wand. An examining table like Isaac’s
sacrificial altar. I watch her eyes for trouble. The screen undulates with lines.
We are intimate strangers. We are strangely intimate. There is a pattern of delicate
spring blooms on my thin robe, a strip of pale blue at the neck. She points to a wiry 
cable of white, says “These are your milk ducts,” and I am surprised by the tenderness
in her voice. For a liminal moment, I picture a brood of babies at my breasts.
I picture everything that might have been, but wasn’t. And then the wand moves on, 
and soon, I am given the all-clear and released into a humid May afternoon, flooded 
with relief and something I may never be able to name. But it looks a wiry cable just 
under my skin, and it sounds like the technician’s tender voice, and it’s haloed in white.