Zoey

“Grief is a weird thing. It can be a monster on your shoulder. It can be a friend sitting with you at the table. It can be a memory in a smell—the soft, delicate notes of floral perfume. Grief can find you in the middle of the night as you roll over to go back to sleep. It can even find you in your dreams. And grief—what it looks like, how it whispers, how you respond—is different for everyone.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“Nothing stayed—or so I had always thought. Nothing stayed and nothing lingered.
But I was wrong.
Because there was an apartment in the Monroe on the Upper East Side that was full of magic, and it taught me how to say goodbye.
And it was no longer mine.
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.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“You have to try on a lot of shoes until you find some you like walking in. Never apologize for that. Once I found mine, I’ve been content for twenty years.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“The sadness will last forever. It wasn’t a lie. There was sadness, and there was despair, and there was pain—but there was also laughter, and joy, and relief. There was never grief without love or love without grief, and I chose to think that my aunt lived because of them.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip