So,​ Your Life. There It Is Before You – Possibly A Road, A Ribbon, A Dotted Line, A Map – Let’s

So,​ your life. There it is before you – possibly a road, a ribbon, a dotted line, a map – let’s say you’re 25, then you make some decisions, do things, have setbacks, have triumphs, become someone, a bus driver, a professor of Indo-European linguistics, a pirate, a cosmetologist, years pass, maybe in a family maybe not, maybe happy maybe not, then one day you wake up and you’re seventy. Looking ahead you see a black doorway. You begin to notice the black doorway is always there, at the edge, whether you look at it or not. Most moments contain it, most moments have a sort of sediment of black doorway at the bottom of the glass. You wonder if other people are seeing it too. You ask them. They say no. You ask why. No one can tell you.

A minute ago you were 25. Then you went ahead getting the life you want. One day you looked back from 25 to now and there it is, the doorway, black, waiting.

— anne carson, gloves on!