I once fell in love with a man who was a poet. His words along with his gaze upon me made me feel so alive. His words stoked a fire in my heart. Sometimes I didn’t reciprocate right away. I wanted to sit in it— bathe in it— for I’d never known anything like it.
I wondered if I was enough. I wasn’t a poet like him. Where I had limitations to express myself, he seemed to have none. I convinced myself he knew how to love and to feel, and I didn’t. I tried so hard to write in verse to show my love, but my words failed to convey what my heart felt. All I could do was try my best and hope that he knew.
Now I know words fall short, and where words fail, the “knowing” trumps. Can the grave and its appetite for the dead ever cease? Can fire be divided into individual flames? Nor can love be contained and pinned to mere syllables.
For I see poets in this world who try to bleed out their heart onto pages, unable to exorcise the ghosts of past loves. They twist, push-pull, and wrangle to squeeze words out, only to extract a drop of what they feel. It’s like the iceberg effect— 10 percent is revealed where 90 percent remains hidden; the tip-top is only our reaction to the events of love, where underneath is the complex design of anticipation and transformation, which cannot be fully explained.
If love were chalked down to the mere wealth of words, it sadly would be minimalized and should be utterly scorned.
I love you needs to be expressed in word, whether poetically written or not; it doesn’t matter. Say it a lot, but show it more. Where words fail to be remembered—even the most beautifully penned ones— I can still remember how he made me feel and how I felt about him; that is unshakable and unforgettable.