No one warns you

 No one warns you.

No one warns you

how your personality gets swallowed whole—

how wanting

can take up all the space,

rewrite you into a single story.

I have become my longing.

Each pill, each shot

maps my day.

I track my body like a question—

what is it doing now,

what does it mean,

will it be?

I used to be present.

Curious.

Now I feel unsteady in myself,

a version of me I don’t quite recognize.

Still—

I am grateful for the friends who stay,

who listen

as I circle the same grief again and again,

who meet me exactly here,

and hold the quiet hope

that I will come back to myself.

Obsessed—yes.

I am consumed

by the wanting of another child.

It narrows everything:

wait,

pill,

appointment,

shot,

appointment,

procedure.

A life reduced to steps and cycles.

It is all-consuming.

And I miss

being more.