Before I Could Stop It

I never gave my heart

permission to fall for you.

One conversation.

Then another.

And suddenly,

you were everywhere haunting familiar songs,

hiding inside ordinary things,

waiting in my first thought

before the morning opened its eyes.

You were in the empty seat beside me,

in every silence that begged

to be filled by your voice,

in the spaces my loneliness

had never noticed before.

I tried to call it coincidence,

a passing fascination,

anything but love.

But the heart is a disobedient thing

a wild and ancient creature

that recognizes its fate

before the mind can name it.

Mine knew you

long before I was brave enough

to admit

that it had already become yours.