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On the quiet perception of a glance that lingers long before it can be called love

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Love is not
the appealing appearance
of a fleeting glance,
fragile in its trembling,
as though it feared to remain.
"It leaves no voice within you..."
The feeling it leaves behind
is barely there,
like a breath that brushes against you
and then disappears.
It creates within itself
an outward appearance
that prevails
over what appears,
veiling the reality
that fears revealing itself,
as though it were afraid of being seen.
It often stands in contrast
to comforting appearances,
silent,
deceiving the eye.
It is a strange thing,
one that belongs, in some way, to all of us...
to those who see love
fail to coincide
with the features of the soul.
Far from the heart,
yet within my soul,
I too found myself lost,
not knowing where to go.

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Poor me... I believed it.
She became the fleeting one,
no longer giving me an answer.
Why was it
that her glance,
within me,
refused to fade?
I could not understand...
In the deepest part of me,
you seemed somehow
to resemble me.
Who told you?
I know nothing about you!
I no longer recognized her,
and that wounded me.
To give myself time,
I listened to her glance,
trying to understand
who she was to me...
she was not fleeting at all.
Halfway there,
without either of us knowing,
we were already looking at each other.
Now...
you are me,
and I am you.
Our eyes
had chosen to meet,
to recognize one another,
to stop and speak.

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We kept drawing closer,
slowly,
little by little.
No one can escape destiny
when two souls choose one another:
it is born of the soul.
And with our souls
turned toward us,
anything may happen.
And it is not easy to say:
it is no longer fleeting.
We speak
in the depths of the heart,
and each time
I discover something more,
enough to shake the soul.
She...
was never
a fleeting glance.
She was what remained,
and remained within me.
Author's Note
Some glances pass through our lives without leaving a trace. Others continue to inhabit our silence long after they are gone.
This poem is not about love already fulfilled, but about what comes before it: that sudden perception which does not arise from intention, does not obey reason, and asks for no explanation.
Sometimes a single fleeting glance recognizes something within us long before we are able to understand it ourselves.
— Antonio Castellaneta

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A FLEETING GLANCE

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