The Seven Year Slip

by Ashley Poston

I just liked plans. I liked sticking to them. I liked knowing what was coming and when it was coming.

“It was good to see you again, Lemon,” before he slipped out of the conference room, and I was left, mouth open, staring after him.

I was shocked.

I knew Iwan wouldn’t be a dishwasher forever, and even if he was, it wouldn’t have mattered—dishwasher or chef or lawyer or no one at all. It was the man with gemstone eyes and the crooked smile and the lovely banter that I felt my soul crushing for.

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.

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