I have loved you in lifetimes before this one
before this name, before this face, before these hands learned the
shape of yours.

I loved you when the world was younger, and the sky felt closer to the earth. When we were strangers passing in a marketplace of dust and saffron light, and something ancient in me turned toward you like a compass finding north. I did not know your language then, but my soul did. It recognized the quiet gravity of yours.

I loved you when we stood on opposite shores of a restless sea, watching the same moon stitch silver into the water. The tide carried my longing to you, folded into its patient rhythm. Even the wind knew your name before I spoke it.

Perhaps we were ink and parchment once
you, the steady hand;
me, the trembling confession.

Or two stars born in the same dark cradle, flung apart by time, yet
forever bending the universe back toward reunion. Constellations
shifted just to map the space between us.

I have loved you in lifetimes where we were brave, and in lifetimes where we were not. In worlds where we chose each other loudly, and in worlds where we let silence do the choosing. Still, love threaded through every version of us, quiet as breath, certain as dawn.

And now, here we are again.

Different bodies.
Different histories.
The same unimaginable recognition.

When your eyes meet mine, it feels less like discovery and more like remembrance. As if somewhere beyond the veil of forgetting, we promised: Find me. And we did.

I think that is what love is
not the beginning of something new,
but the continuation of something eternal.

A flame carried carefully from one lifetime to the next,
cupped in trembling hands,
refusing to go out.