And where love used to come to me at night like dreams, she dawned upon me suddenly in broad daylight. A calm, quick and, at first, uneventful revelation whose silent gravity weighed on me greatly in the hours that would follow it’s discovery. I noticed that I loved her the way you discover liking pineapples, or that you should call your mother more. When a thought flashed, crowded by some nine others, and I softly filed each to where and when they belong. But when I thought about her an awareness happened, one I couldn’t blink or wave away as easily as I would have imagined.

Maybe, was all I could think. And Maybe persisted throughout the day until Maybe erupted and it was all and everything. Then, having awakened this nameless consciousness, I felt it inhale its first deep and gasping air for breath, and like a newborn, take one long and finite pause before screaming.

Maybe.

For a while, days which were only seconds, I refused to acknowledge this very daunting and real idea. I ignored it, the way I ignored the concept of me liking pineapple or that I should call my mother more. Whims exist and are only true for a certain amount of time, after all. But this only kept the Maybe silent, I felt it panicked, pacing around my heart, thrashing and waiting desperately to finally exhale.

I said it once to myself, unsure I guess, or perhaps to see. Sometimes putting words to a feeling does not make it real, but only exaggerates how ridiculous it really is. I said it once to myself: what if I love her?

And suddenly I felt the world around me twirl and change it’s shape. What I cared for grew twice the size, and what I didn’t now had such a tremendous sympathy with it. I looked around, expecting a disaster, but the people and my desk were all the same.

Maybe I was the only one wasn’t.