Some loves don’t arrive suddenly.

They begin quietly, long before we know what they are.

Before We Love came from noticing that strange truth — that the heart often starts preparing itself without permission, without language, without a plan.

There’s a moment before love is named where something shifts. A modest heat. A door slightly open. A sense that the world has begun to lean in a direction we didn’t choose.

This poem isn’t about romance as surprise. It’s about love as something that forms us while we’re still resisting it.

What we call chance — a glance, a name, a feeling that arrives too soon — might be recognition instead. The heart, already shaped by fear and longing, finally sees what it was made to hold.

Love here is not gentle, but it is faithful. It doesn’t avoid pressure. It grows because of it.

And when love finally arrives, it doesn’t feel dramatic.

It feels familiar.

Like something that has been waiting for us all along.

Read the full poem and analysis tomorrow 21st: https://alkonda.com/2026/01/21/before-we-love/

© Al Konda · The Poetry Elite