Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

Last week she sent me an entire Dropbox full of her rabbi in various states of undress in the backyard.

Murphy was never interested in anything canine. It is my genuine belief that he is a 1940s banker who was once cursed by a witch to live in a dog’s body.

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.

I wanted him. I wanted to wake up with him and go to sleep with him. I wanted to stand behind him in the bathroom mirror in the morning, my face pressed against his wet back, as he got ready for work. I wanted his feet to find mine in the middle of the night.

I often wonder what our responsibility is to other people, how much we owe them. Whose job is it to look out for our own happiness. Us, or the people who love us? It’s both, of course. We owe ourselves and each other. But in what order?

I try to hold on to this moment. I try to fall to the depths of it. And it’s there, in the reflections in the water at the very bottom, that I know what I need to do next. It’s easy to pretend you do not know while you’re waiting, but it’s impossible once the truth arrives.