Cleaning out closets, I come across an old bag I forgot I ever had, brown with brass studs. I unzip the inside pocket and out falls a little sealed packet with two dark purple tablets, OB ONE prenatal vitamins, expiration 4/2013. Remind me what year it is? Once upon a time I ate so many of them, so many months of hoping and waiting, so many cells dividing and multiplying, the boys and mine. I can taste the pills: the plastic coating, the ocean smell. Where was I going in 2013, with this bag like a chrysalis in my hand?
Gretchen Wiker is a writer and former middle school teacher in Northern California.