So this is...

Some inevitable beginning. I am sure of it. Because it is inevitable. I am as sure of it as I am of grass growing. I know it happens, and often see it, but I know it happens elsewhere, all the time, and even if I never see it again, it will go on.

But.

Beginning of what?

Is this love? Is that what this is? The desire to spend personal, genuine time with someone. To rip the metaphorical mask off of their face and tell them that it's ok to be vulnerable. To be alone with them. There is always someone there. Even if you go out together, without others, you are not alone. You feel as though the world watches, because it has watched for so long. I desire to be alone with him, away from the world, to draw him away from the mask and the false smiles I see him give, and to share my vulnerabilities and thoughts about things, and to hear his vulnerabilities and thoughts. I want to share my life.

Is that love? It could be.

Is there physical love, too? The pull to the chemistry of another person. The quivering of your atoms at their nearness. The sudden sensitivity of your skin, where breezes set the fleshy bumps a goosin' and the thought of a touch causes a tickling in the small of your back. The desire to put your hand in theirs and feel and feel and feel their skin and whether it is warm or cool, dry and chapped, or moist and slippery. Maybe it's powdery soft, perfect to spend the day wrapped in. Oh the desire to press your hand in theirs. The urge to be lip to lip, hands rested on the vague scruff of a day of growing face. To fervent, almost fanatical, hope that they will hold you in a crushing embrace, their lips insistent on yours, arms pinning you to them, as if hoping to absorb you. The would wish to absorb them. The longing for the osmosis.

Yes, those feelings are there, too.

Perhaps, all of these things, emotional longing and physical longing.

Perhaps they are love.

Perhaps this inevitable beginning is the beginning of love.