Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

If you never stop long enough to sink into something, then it can’t destroy you. It’s easier to climb out of a pool than a well, is the thing.

I do miss the thing I don’t have. It’s strange to feel that, to want something that you’ve never even known before. But that’s love, isn’t it? The belief in something you cannot see or touch or even explain. Like the heart itself, we just know it’s there.

“I don’t think the opposite of casual is serious, actually.” “What is it, then?” Jake looks at me. His hazel eyes appear almost gold underneath the light of the heat lamp—tiny specks of sunlight. “Depth,” he says. “The opposite of casual is deep.”

It’s hard to hold on to people the older we get. Life looks different for everyone, and you have to keep choosing one another. You have to make a conscious effort to say, over and over again, “You.” Not everyone makes that choice. Not everyone can.

“That’s not the truth; that’s your story about it. And they aren’t the same thing.” My muscles contract. Everything shrinking inward, tighter, closer. I look at him, defiant. “How the hell would you know?” “Because,” Hugo says. His eyes look into mine—solid black pools. They look like rocks in the water—landing, skipping the surface. “I wrote Jake’s note.”

We have to be cracked open sometimes. We have to be cracked open sometimes to let anything good in. What I see now, emerging in the mirror, is this one, simple truth: learning to be broken is learning to be whole.