The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

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.

Like strangers who’ve seen each other naked in every way that counts, in all the ways that wreck you.

Baby, I’m a Pisces, I wallow in feelings,”

I wondered a lot, alone in our bed while he pulled another all-nighter, when he stopped being hungry for me.

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

I glance out the window, homesick again, standing in the middle of the place I miss.

We used to see each other naked every day, in mundane moments and intensely pleasurable ones.

He’s the same and totally different. The fifteen-year-old boy I liked and the twenty-year-old man I loved, and the twenty-eight-year-old I have to keep right here, because at one point he was the twenty-three-year-old man who broke my heart.

I say “What?” and he says, “I’m in love with you.” That easy, like he’s said it a hundred times before. It takes me a second to realize this is the first. But it’s now, not then. I get out a strangled, “Again?” He’s not smiling, but his mouth is soft, his eyes are soft, this word is soft: “Still.”

I’m going to think about how you’re in love with me and you’ve been in love with me this whole time—through everything—and yet you let me leave you without a fight. I’m going to think about how you quit your job now and how you’re going to therapy now and how I wasn’t enough for any of that five years ago.”

There are three silent words before each item: I love you. Because we share an address now.

I never thought about how special it is to share an address with the person you're in love with before

Because you were smug as hell when I told you Heather Russo has a crush on me. I love your petty little heart. You know I belong to you, but you don’t know how.

Even though it hurts to love you sometimes. Even though I can’t make you happy.

Stop it :'(

I was desperate to marry him in the place where those first roots of love dug in between us.