The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

by Joanna Cannon

She never dismissed his worries, she just disentangled them, smoothing down the edges and spreading them out until they became thin and insignificant.

It was strange how the past often broke into the present like an intruder, dangerous and unwanted. Yet whenever the past was invited in, whenever its presence was requested, it seemed to fade into nothing, and made you wonder if it had ever really existed in the first place.

The choices she has made are now a part of her. They have stitched themselves into the person she has become, and when she stops to see who that is, she finds that the cloth from which she is cut has begun to suffocate her.

It’s the small decisions, the ones that slip themselves into your day unnoticed, the ones that wrap their weight in insignificance. These are the decisions that will bury you.

You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.