The Seven Year Slip

by Ashley Poston

For all the food lovers out there who burn popcorn in the microwave: we’d be too strong if we could cook, too

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.

I loved how a book, a story, a set of words in a sentence organized in the exact right order, made you miss places you’ve never visited, and people you’ve never met.

She told me to pay attention—that the heartbreak was important, too.

She only ever had two rules in this apartment—one, always take your shoes off by the door. And two: never fall in love. Because anyone you met here, anyone the apartment let you find, could never stay. No one in this apartment ever stayed. No one ever would.

‘Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.’

Fiona followed that up with, Okay maybe don’t text. IF YOU’RE THE MURDERER WE’RE COMING AFTER YOU BUDDY. Drew added, YEAH GET FUCKED.

Like I wasn’t merely some girl to kiss and remember fondly in ten years, but someone to be kissed in ten years. In twenty.

It’s never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.”

who was so afraid of something good that she settled for safe,

That was love, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just a quick drop—it was falling, over and over again, for your person. It was falling as they became new people. It was learning how to exist with every new breath. It was uncertain and it was undeniably hard, and it wasn’t something you could plan for.

Love was an invitation into the wild unknown, one step at a time together.

Sometimes the people you loved left you halfway through a story. Sometimes they left you without a goodbye. And, sometimes, they stayed around in little ways. In the memory of a musical. In the smell of their perfume. In the sound of the rain, and the itch for adventure, and the yearning for that liminal space between one airport terminal and the next. I hated her for leaving, and I loved her for staying as long as she could.

That didn’t matter, though, because I carried all of the good moments with me, the walls and the furniture—the claw-foot tub and the robin’s-egg blue chair—and the way my aunt danced me around the living room, so no matter where I was, I would always be home. Because the things that mattered most never really left. The love stays. The love always stays, and so do we.