Her Belly an Orange

Overheard: When she was pregnant she got all emotional.

Where it took me: This line really didn’t take me anywhere; I was emotional when I was pregnant, though possibly no more so than I usually am. My husband, on the other hand, really liked this line. Perhaps I was more emotional than I thought. In either case, I didn’t want to write something straightforward about being pregnant and emotional. Instead, I used an exercise that focuses on metaphor. I wrote 20 random nouns on sticky notes, then closed my eyes and chose two. I got ‘orange’ and ‘midwife.’ I wrote as many details as I could that described each noun. In the end, the details for ‘orange’ led me, quite unexpectedly, to this poem.