The Seven Year Slip

by Ashley Poston

My aunt used to say, if you don’t fit in, fool everyone until you do. She also said to keep your passport renewed, to pair red wines with meats and whites with everything else, to find work that is fulfilling to your heart as well as your head, to never forget to fall in love whenever you can find it because love is nothing if not a matter of timing, and to chase the moon.

it never mattered where she was in the world, she was home. She waltzed through life like she belonged at every party she was never invited to, fell in love with every lonely heart she found, and found luck in every adventure.

there was a gap between early twenties and late twenties that only people existing in bodies in their late twenties understood. You could still fight god, but you’d have to ice your knees afterward.

She left and I was still here and there were so many things she hadn’t done yet, or wouldn’t ever do in the future. There were sunrises she’d never see and Christmases in Rockefeller Plaza she’d never complain about and layovers she’d never catch and wine she’d never drink with me again at that yellow table of hers as we ate fettuccine that was never the same twice.

nothing lasts forever. Not the good things, not the bad. So just find what makes you happy, and do it for as long as you can.”

There was never grief without love or love without grief, and I chose to think that my aunt lived because of them. Because of all the light and love and joy that she found in the shadows of everything that plagued her. She lived because she loved, and she lived because she was loved, and what a lovely lifetime she gave us.

Because the things that mattered most never really left. The love stays. The love always stays, and so do we.