There are moments when time feels like it folds in on itself—when a single glance from a stranger sparks memories I can’t place, as if our souls have already met. I wrote “Have We Met Before?” in one of those moments, trying to capture the strange ache of recognition, the pull of someone who feels familiar beyond this life.

This poem is my attempt to trace the invisible threads that might tie us together across time, love, and memory, and to ask the question that lingers in my heart: have we met before?

Have We Met Before

It’s strange how seeing the one meant for you
can spark lost memories—
fragments of laughter, a scent of rain,
the echo of a voice nearly remembered.
Looking across the room, not wanting to meet your eyes,
for fear of getting lost in them forever.
Have we met before?

Was there a time, distant and before us,
when we sat planning futures?
I know we’ve exchanged passing glances,
perhaps shared a glass of wine riverside, watching
our reflections drift and distort beneath the bridge.
Did we promise to find each other again,
no matter how many lives it took?
Have we met before?

Our souls must have danced ere the winds blew,
swirling our lives together.
We were it—
the light before the breaking dawn,
the calm before the storm remembered us.
I love you, and know it was as then,
as now, as ever.
Have we met before?

Dark curls embracing sweet shoulders,
framing two perfect eyes.
I was lost without us—
searching in faces that were almost you,
in voices that briefly called my name.
When did it seem to be
this endless circle of finding and forgetting?
Have we met before?

If we have,
promise me this time to stay.
Let the past lives fall silent behind us,
let the river run without names.
For I am tired of remembering you in dreams only —
tired of knowing and losing, again and again.
If love is a timeless pattern forever etched,
then I am ready to trace it to the end.
Have we met before?