Choose me.

Pregnancy takes my body hostage. My body given over to another being and there’s nothing I control. The thought is fleeting; I just want you. Sam has put the children to bed.

“Do you really want this life with me?” he asks.

We are sitting side by side on the front porch steps watching evening settle like a blanket over the neighborhood.

“ Of course I do,” I reply.

We sit silently for a few minutes and then he speaks into the dusk:

“I mean, if we could go back and start it all over again would you have chosen this? Now that you know what its like, would you have?”

I lean forward and wrap my arms around my knees.

“I don’t think that way,” I tell him. “You are so wrapped up in me now – there’s no extracting it.”

Even as I look at him loneliness shoots through my body. I think we need to feel lonely like we need food and water. Like we gulp air.