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. Always, always chase the moon.

The permission I thought I’d given myself, but it hadn’t been permission to cry—it had been a command to be strong. To be okay. I told myself, over and over, I had to be okay. And finally—finally—someone gave me permission to come undone.

And we laughed, and charted each other’s bodies down to our cores, maps of places that were familiar and yet new, and the night was good, and my heart was full, and I was happy, so happy, to fall in love on a night like this, where I felt like I had finally caught the moon, and more.

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

A book is a time capsule. No matter how much I change, or will change, or will learn, this book will be stagnant. It’ll exist here, forever unchanged, along with the pieces of me that I put into the pages.