Every life ... 'has a sister ship,'...

"Every life, Transtromer writes, 'has a sister ship,' one that follows 'quite another route' than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live in a different, phantom life than the people we are. ... I'll never know and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. IT was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, the Rumpus Advice Column