The question lasts longer than the wanting

There was a time when want sat heavy in me, when it blurred into need. It settled low in the belly, its restless motion close enough to hunger to be mistaken for it.

It carried the urgency of a firefight — if I just had…

I was a poor kid with plans for escape, convinced the future held a thing, a moment, a version of myself that would quiet the noise and finally make me feel not hungry. I wanted to get there. I wanted to get there yesterday. I knew I needed to arrive before the wanting burned me from the inside out.

When I drifted that way, my grandad would catch it. He never asked what I wanted.

He’d just say, “What’s it feel like to want?”

I carry that question now, heavier than I did then. I wonder what want felt like to him. I wonder what he learned by holding it long enough.

I’ve traveled some ground since then. Warm food after days of MREs. A quiet corner of a tent and the opportunity to sleep. The weight of a baby with a full belly and a dry diaper. The warmth of being loved on a cold, dark night. Laughter in the middle of tragedy. Tears there too.

Somewhere along the way, the briars and underbrush thinned. Not all at once. Not with relief. Just a slow absence of the things that once tangled.

Want didn’t disappear. It just stepped away from need, where it’s orders no longer carried.

The accounting of what was missing fell quiet. The rush to arrive loosened its grip. The need to explain, to be seen, to justify the miles — it faded.

In its place, the old tools that don’t fail.

The ground under my feet.

The ground I’ve already crossed.

The memories that still carry weight.