There is a hunger that I keep feeding even when it slowly unmakes me and leaves marks I pretend aren't there,
There is a hunger that disguises itself as ambition but underneath it is just a quiet ache I haven't had the courage to name it out loud,
There is a hunger, am I feeding it because it is genuinely mine to follow or because the thought of reaching the end of my life with nothing to show for the wanting is a fear I have never been brave enough to sit with long enough to answer,
There is a hunger that has owned me longer than I have ever consciously chosen to own anything about myself…
There is a longing I’ve dressed in noble and respectable words to avoid the shame of my need,
There is a longing that has made me smaller and more desperate every single time I let it take the wheel without asking where we are actually going,
There is a longing, do I even remember the last time I wanted something without the fear arriving at the same moment where the two are so tangled together now that I can no longer tell where the wanting ends and the bracing for its loss begins,
There is a longing that quietly became the anchor long before it ever had the chance to become the current that was supposed to move me…
There is a version of me that calls it vision and purpose when if I am being honest with myself it is really just desperation wearing a much prettier coat than it deserves,
There is a version of me that has spent more time rehearsing the moment of arrival than she has ever spent patiently and honestly building the actual road beneath her feet,
There is a version of me that is still trying to locate the exact moment the dream shifted, when it stopped feeling like something I chose freely and started feeling like an obligation I had somehow agreed to,
There is a version of me that keeps forgetting she was already whole and enough before any of the wanting ever started building…
There is a cost I keep agreeing to without slowing down long enough to count what I am actually spending, the peace, steadiness, the quiet confidence of someone who knows exactly what they are worth and charges accordingly,
There is a cost measured in all the nights I couldn't sleep because the future felt simultaneously too possible and too cruel to bear quietly,
There is a cost to this desire. Can I hold it loosely enough that if it slips away it leaves me still standing — still whole, still mine, still capable of wanting something new without the scar of this one defining everything that comes after,
There is a cost I have been calling devotion for years now when if I am fully honest with myself I should have been calling it fear all along…
The wanting owned me before I ever named it,
I dressed the longing in words I could defend,
Chasing the arrival without building the road,
The dream became a debt I never borrowed,
Calling it devotion when it was always fear…
