In Twenty Years

by Allison Winn Scotch

This is what nearly being robbed of time does to you: it leaves you glancing over both shoulders, wondering when it will catch up to you, wondering when its pace will quicken so you can no longer outrun it.

In marriage—one that manages to stay together—that’s what happens: someone apologizes, and what are you going to do? Hold your resentment against him forever? Maybe for a night, maybe you’re still pissed off when you click off the light for sleep. But the only other option, other than forgiveness, is letting your resentment seep down into you, into your pores, into your veins, eventually into the foundation that you built together, and that undoes everything.

Can you help? Can I lean on you? Can you prop me up?