It Is: You Appeared Once. A Story about Potential Dimensions, Abortion, and the Blurry Appearing and Disappearing of Matter

If I am infinite, if my body can produce other bodies and so on, and so on, where do I end? How do I move? How do I touch myself? How do I hug and comfort myself? It almost felt alien.

In the fall of 2018, I became pregnant and about seven weeks later, I had an abortion surgery. This is about the transformation that happened, and which continued.

Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova’s intimate thoughts following their abortion surgery invite us into a deeply personal experience beyond debate. Through an honesty only possible in poetry, they tell a story that defies the separation between mind and body, self and others, past and future, objectivity and experience, physics and transcendence.