The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

I’ll watch him test versions of nicknames with other friends, but mine will only ever be Peach. When I eventually ask him why, he’ll tell me it’s because he knew exactly who I was to him from the start.

It’s an addicting feeling, knowing I’m in the middle of meeting a person I’ll get to hang on to.

He’ll hold on to it for years, but eventually that spark will become a wildfire. And then we’ll burn it all down.

Sometimes I swear adulthood is staring at your phone and wondering which of your friends has enough time to deal with your latest emotional meltdown, then realizing none of them do.

a love that had once been so intense I felt it in every fragile system of my body.

A sense that this is a goodbye to an era that shaped me.

It’s a gift to know someone when you’re in love with them, and a curse when you’re out of it.

“It doesn’t matter what I think.” “It actually does,” he says, his voice low. “Very much.”

The reality of kissing him again is a shock I couldn’t have prepared myself for, like finding something I thought I’d lost forever sitting on my top shelf. Within reach the whole time, back in my hands again.

And I think, this is what love is. What I’m looking at, what I’m feeling, what’s happening here this weekend. What I crave in every corner of my bones, and what I’m so scared of getting, because so often I lose it.

“You look so beautiful I can’t feel my knees.”

“It’s not going perfectly. Doesn’t mean it’s not right.”

Eli can’t see my heart, and it’s for the better because he’d see his name everywhere in it. But it’s for the worse because he doesn’t see that his name is everywhere in it, and that hurts him.

Time is cruel and a miracle all in one swoop. It shows you what you had, and sometimes brings it back to you, but it’s always different.

Building a space that’s mine, rather than fitting myself into the pockets where people have room for me. I can feel myself stretching, a necessary, beautiful pain.

It’s a privilege to have someone trust you enough to show you those pieces of themselves, the most vulnerable and tender, the least polished.

Isn’t that the way I deserve to be loved—completely, messily, imperfectly? Isn’t that the way I deserve to love myself?