Eight months ago, I stood in a room full of flowers, candles and friends and said yes to Steve. Not the yes I whispered to boys who didn’t love themselves, let alone me. This was a still yes. A yes with real meaning. A yes that meant I finally knew the difference between longing and choosing.
The wedding was celestial and I ended that day with all my stars truly aligned. There was no pretence. No grand orchestra. Just the beauty of two lovers believing in forever after surviving so many endings.
In the months since, I’ve learned that marriage is a quiet constant. It is being truly seen in every version of myself and not flinching. It is domesticity without dullness, routine without rot.
We have argued, yes. But every time, we’ve returned to each other like rivers to oceans. There is no high drama anymore. Only the sacred dance of two people learning how not to run.
I used to think love was the fire. Now I know it’s the healing.
There are nights we still ache. There are wounds we each carried into this house and not all of them have names. But love doesn’t demand we be healed to be enough. It only asks we stay strong enough to try.
Eight months in and I am less interested in being loved perfectly and more interested in being known truly. Steve sees me. Not the curated me, not the performative version I used to play for those who couldn’t love me at my realest. He sees me tired, petty, ecstatic, terrified, and still stays through it all.
There is life after the I do. Not a closing of the story, but a deepening. A new genre, maybe. The quiet novel that follows the poem. Still lyrical, but less concerned with fancy metaphors and more grounded in the tender mundane. Shared glances. The way he folds the washing when I forget. The way he kisses me goodnight.
I spent a decade documenting the life and death of love. And now, I am writing about its afterlife. The part where love is not lost or chased or mourned. The part where love is home.
And I am finally, wholly, home.
Ryon Maverick 