There are baby pictures on the wall
Of a house made for a family
One lives here now
Held together with so much love, globs of toothpaste
and shoes everywhere
fighting over the dishes and hugging in the kitchen all the time
A fifteen year old boy slips quietly in the shadows
through the night when we're asleep
No one to ask him questions
No one to have to give an answer to
Polite, distant, disinterested and distracted
in the way 15 year old boys are
No one calls me Mom
It's likely no one ever will
I've moved on from pity
to acceptance
Of low egg counts and hormones bottomed out
rendering it nearly impossible
I did this to myself
I say to my soon to be husband
(can i really be a person who will have a husband?)
It was my fault for not doing it earlier
For not figuring it out sooner
For not being a different person before
He doesn't understand
Can't understand the hormones of womanhood and the
constant need to nurture that spills out
even when there is no one to nurture
I'm 38.
Has anyone ever been so old?
my family members have all been stagnant ages
my mother, father, aunts, uncles, steady constant
through all my stages
all the world's a stage and I was the only one with a part
Now I see the toll of time
and i can't believe i am here
Wishing for the clock to have turned back around
knowing too, nothing would change even if it did
I am who i am and I was what I was
I was a 25 year old with crippling anxiety
I was a 28 year old who was unstable
A 30 year old who self medicated
A 32 year old who found her way back
A 36 year old who fell in love
Who went to therapy
Who got her shit together
A 37 year old with a ring on her finger
And now i am 38
With baby pictures on my wall
pictures that i didn't take
of children I didn't make
dreaming of babies floating to the bottom of the water
and me, swimming down after them
trying to see their faces
so I could just know what they would have looked like
before i wake up
to hug in the kitchen
and live a life that i never dreamed could be mine
with a ring on my finger
and him
always him
