One Ring to Rule Them All

A cluster of fifteen tiny diamonds
Set in a triangle “with its tips cut off” (as I like to describe to faraway friends).
It is my wedding ring.

I see something I never noticed at the jeweller’s.
My ring displays the universal symbol of nuclear capability:
a three-pronged rotor balanced precariously on one point.

Nuclear capability. How coy the message from my ring, with its hopeful triad
Of husband, home and children.

Apt as well:
I, the wearer of the ring, belong to a country that proudly scorched to white ash
a mountain five years ago. I hold a green passport, fit the breed
examined at airports, share the brown skin of terrorists.
I deserve this nuclear ring because I am Pakistani.

But do you know whom I have wed? A red, white and blue American.
I hope to join him in his country soon.

But right now
My gentle husband and I stare at each other across a war-scented abyss. Alone,
I glance often at my newly-minted ring.

If I look at it long enough I spin with its rotors, careening towards a tangled, mangled future. In it
I see joy and hope and danger cluster together, bright, hard and gleaming.