Before I Knew

He appeared in her life on a night when even the stars seemed shy, their shimmer pale under the weight of her solitude. His arrival was not a sound, not a word ... just a gentle, invisible presence, like a current stirring the sleeping surface of a pond. She felt him there, swimming among the stars she had long ago claimed as her only company.

Before his hands reached for her ... before she even knew what warmth they could offer ... he had already left a mark. There was something uncanny about him, the way he seemed to fill the silence in her world, leaving no space for loneliness to settle. He traced the lines on her face not with touch, but with understanding, like he could see the stories tangled in her smile and the sorrow hidden beneath her eyes.

She watched as flowers danced where his sunlight fell, though his fire needed neither matches nor wood. With every glance, he took her breath away, yet somehow, she never felt suffocated. Instead, she felt more alive, more aware of the colors and possibilities she had long forgotten. Even on days when he was nowhere to be found, his presence lingered ... always there, even when he wasn’t.

At first, she feared she might break, that letting herself trust this comfort would leave her shattered when it faded. But each time she stumbled, he caught her with a word or a smile, keeping her safe before the fall could begin. He taught her how to believe in things she couldn’t see, in the quiet hope that grew like ivy around her heart.

Before she understood what his hands could create ... how they could mend and heal, how they could wipe away tears and paint laughter into the air ... he had already touched her soul. He broke through the long night she had built around herself, and for the first time in years, the darkness receded, replaced by the steady, reassuring beat of something real.

Now, with time stretching between them, his memory is a ghostly flame, both gentle and haunting. In her heart, he carved his name, not with grand gestures, but in the softest moments ... a joke shared in the quiet, a promise whispered in the dusk. She runs her fingers along the walls she once thought unbreakable and finds, to her surprise, that he has written his story there, too.

She knows now that some marks are meant to last, that love can slip in before you even know it’s there. And though his hands may no longer hold hers, their memory feels right ... a comfort, a promise, a reminder that sometimes, before you know it, you are changed forever.