Providence

by Caroline Kepnes

You forget about death, how it kills other people’s dreams.

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

This happens. Little spells. You don’t lose a person all at once. You lose them in parts.

but that’s what everyone does when they come home, you try to find your past.

This is the bad part of marriage, where you have to pretend to be excited about the new people you call family, as if you didn’t always know they’re beady-eyed, cold at heart.