it hits you mid-shower, as you're half trying to keep soap-suds out of your eye and half attempting to figure out if you've got split ends yet -
one minute you're thinking of nothing at all and the next you suddenly realize, you love him. you like him? you love him? the word ceases to matter.
oh god, you love him.
you love him for how the corners of his eyes crinkle up when he laughs, for how he cares if you're home safe, for how the first thing on his bucket list is for his grandmother to hold his first child.
for how you could sit with him for hours with nothing but your shoulders touching, and be complete in the warmth he exudes in comfortable silence.
for how he talks and how he walks, for how he looks at you, for how his eyes seem to have endless depth.
and the funny thing is that you know you've lost the game but you don't care that you've lost, you don't care if he loves you back or if he doesn't because in that moment you have remembered what it is to love a person not for what they look like or for what they sound like but for who they are
and the knowledge that after two whole years of bitterness and hiding away in your shell you have discovered what it is to love again and nothing else matters in that moment because for what it counts you have found yourself again in loving someone and you realize that
your heart has so much left to give; who you choose to give it to does not matter as much as the knowledge that you are capable of loving, the kind of love that does not fear hurt or pain but embraces it as part of the essence of love.