Providence

by Caroline Kepnes

But the thing about things that break your heart, it’s hard to validate them by saying them out loud.

Your hands only know what they’re doing when they’re on my body was what she said to me that first day this plan was made. Was anything so wonderful ever said to a man, naked?

The infinite blackness. What else does that sound like to you? Something murky and infinite?” A pin-thin pixie boy in the back row screams, “Love!”

It’s amazing how much money you save when you don’t have a social life, when you don’t have to go see your friends for the game, when you don’t have friends.

I know what Dr. Woo said about Wilbur, I think about it every day, that there was no other possible fate for a creature like that, that it’s not enough to be part human if you’re mostly monster.

But isn’t it why you get married in the first place? So that someone can row the boat when you’re tired.

Because the universe is timing. We exist, each one of us, because of timing. If you think about it, life is timing. I have bad timing.

You don’t lose a person all at once. You lose them in parts.

And then my phone beeps. My heart becomes the kind you read about in love stories, in poems, this thing that beats for another, not just for me. We’re all wired to react to that sound. The dopamine rush that follows a notification. Someone wants you. Someone’s thinking of you. This feels good to us. It makes our bones tingle. It’s universal.