I don’t know when it began...
Maybe it was while I was working,
lost in small responsibilities,
arranging things, setting them in place,
thinking without knowing I was thinking.
And suddenly,
time loosened its grip on me.
I was not here anymore.
I was somewhere softer.
Somewhere that smelled like old houses in the afternoon,
like a different kind of warmth drifting from someone else’s kitchen,
like childhood hiding in corners.
A line echoed somewhere inside me —
“I remember when I first noticed that you liked me back.”
It did not feel like a song.
It felt like a memory I had forgotten to keep.
The words moved slowly through me
and I slipped quietly into the past.
I was small again.
Walking through school corridors.
Believing in simple friendships.
Waiting to meet someone in class
as if I had always known
someone would be there for me.
And in that strange overlap of time,
the friend I was about to meet
had your face.
It felt natural.
Not dramatic.
Not new.
Just familiar.
As if my heart had recognized you
long before my mind ever did.
As if every version of me —
the child,
the girl arranging her world neatly,
the woman standing here now —
had always been walking toward you
without knowing your name.
You were not an arrival.
You were a remembering.
Like you had always existed in the background of my life,
quietly, patiently,
waiting for the moment I would finally see you clearly.
And now that I do,
I don’t feel like I found you.
I feel like I came home to something
that was mine from the very beginning.
You have always been.
I just didn’t know you were my love.
And now that I know,
I love you in a way that feels older than time,
deeper than memory,
and certain beyond doubt.
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