The First Glance

You did not arrive as a sudden event
there was no declaration,
no disruption that announced your presence.

Instead, it was subtle
like a quiet recalibration of the world
that only the most attentive part of me
was able to recognize.

It began with a glance,
Not a fleeting one,
but a moment held just long enough
to suggest that something
had been acknowledged between us
without needing words.

In that instant,
the ordinary world continued-
people moved, time passed,
the familiar hum of existence persisted-
yet something within me
had already shifted.

It was not attraction alone,
It was recognition,

As though a part of me
had been waiting
not consciously, not deliberately
but in some deeper, older place
where longing forms
before it has language.

You stood there,
not seeking to be noticed,
not offering anything beyond yourself
and yet,
in your stillness,
you held a gravity
that drew me inward
without resistance.

And I understood something
that I could not have learned from experience alone:

that certain flukes
do not enter our lives to be explained
they arrive to be felt,
to be remembered,
and to quietly begin
the process of transforming us
from within.

~ Dr Intaj Malek