In the hour unmarked by omen or star,

When love lay sleeping beneath common dust,

I found thee not by vow nor by intent,

But as rain finds stone, unbidden, just.

We met where hearts are warned to wander not,

Where glances pass like strangers in the night,

Yet fate, old weaver of the unseen thread,

Drew close our steps

No herald sang, no prophecy was read,

No incense burned to bless the meeting place;

Only the hush where chance removes its mask,

And destiny reveals a gentle face.

You knew me not, nor I the map of you,

Still something ancient stirred within my chest,

As though my soul, long exiled from its kin,

Had found at last the shore where it may rest.

We spoke as strangers often do,

With guarded eyes and simple words,

Yet my heart heard a softer voice

Before my mind had even heard.

For love is strange and wisely bold,

It comes where none believe,

And plants its roots in quiet ground

Where hearts forgot to grieve.

Where hope was never planted, nor expected;

Like gold unveiled in ruin and in ash,

Like truth where all belief stood unprotected.

So here I stand, unnamed to you,

Holding a truth I cannot flee:

And silence guards what time must yet refine;

But know this truth, writ older than the moon:

What found me there was fate, and made thee mine.

Where love was never expected,

In a place with no promise, no sign.

No one would have guessed that a heart

Could wake there, least of all *mine*.