She Learned to Measure Love in Milligrams

This poem examines caregiving at the intersection of chronic illness, intimacy, and end-of-life uncertainty. Rather than presenting diabetes solely as a medical condition, it traces how care gradually becomes organized through numbers, routines, restrictions, and vigilance. Glucose readings, insulin doses, meals, wounds, and laboratory results function as recurring symbols of a relationship increasingly translated into clinical measurements. Against this numerical order, the poem foregrounds forms of care that remain unrecorded: sleeplessness, fear, touch, memory, and the quiet labor of staying present. The final movement shifts from disease management toward palliative recognition, where comfort and relational dignity become more important than strict control. By contrasting measurable indicators with immeasurable devotion, the poem reflects on caregiver burden, anticipatory grief, and the emotional transformation of a partner into an informal clinical companion. It ultimately asks how love may be reclaimed when treatment can no longer promise recovery.