Love Poem by Maya Reid

People say love’s a funny thing
Some will tell you it’s foolish and blind
One will say it’s more trouble than it’s worth
Another that you can’t live without it
Or, my personal favorite:
Love works in mysterious ways
It’s the most powerful, magical thing in the world
A force beyond our control
With the power to sweep you off your feet
And take you on a wild, if bumpy, ride
Some try to be poetic
Love is hearing an echo of yourself in the caverns of another’s soul
And that’s all well and good
But it doesn’t answer my question
It doesn’t tell me what love is.
Is it the first time they make your heart skip a beat?
Or when you can identify a person by their smell?
Is it when you first feel yourself melt into another person?
Or simply when you realize you’ve never felt this way before?
People say that love is life
So is it when you’re convinced that you couldn’t live without them?
How about when you’d die to ensure they lived on?
Or do you love someone when you can imagine spending the rest of your life together?
The first time you lay in their arms and think, ‘I could stay here’?
Is it the ability to bare your soul to another without worry?
As simple and ridiculously complicated as letting someone in?
Is love being strong enough to bear someone else’s weight
Or being able to take the weight off their shoulders?
Is it being able to make their troubles melt away?
Is love…comfortable?
Will it make you feel safe?
Is love feeling so good it hurts
Or might it be better described as feeling like you’ll never feel good again?
Is love realizing that today is all you can ask for
And dreaming of forever anyway?
Is it finding beauty in everything
And filling the simplest object with meaning?
Is love trusting someone completely?
Is it being willing to do anything just to see them once again?
Or is it when even the thought of letting go reduces you to tears?
Is it knowing they’ll never make you cry
Or losing the fairytale and being able to cry in front of them?
Is love being different because of somebody else?
Is it never wanting to go back to the way you were before?
Or is it just realizing that there is another way to be?
Does love show you everything your life could be?
Is love waking up in the morning with them on your mind?
Is love being found?
Or is it slowly losing yourself?
Giving yourself over to this other person?
Is it realizing that someone other than you yourself is real
Having something real with that real person
Or the first time you wonder if anything is real at all?
Is it being two halves of the same life
Or living simultaneously?
Is it turning yourself into a coat of armor to protect them
Or realizing that you have to let them live
No matter the harm the world might cause them?
Is it wanting to hold them so tight you’ll steal all their pain away?
Is love newlyweds who can’t keep their hands off one another
Or the old couple at the restaurant who are content to never say a word?
Can it possibly be both?
Or is the answer D: none of the above?
And what about the different kinds of love?
A mother’s for her newborn child
The playful protection between brother and sister
High school’s fragile relationships
The seemingly indestructible bond between true friends
And, finally, when your search for a soulmate comes to an end?
And what about when the layers blend?
How do you tell just where each one ends?
Can someone please tell me
What IS love?
(Maybe I’ll have to answer myself.)
I think love might be forgiveness
You love someone when you’re accepting
When you’re willing to try it again
Is it the heartfelt ‘I’m sorry’ after a fight?
Or making peace with another’s complexity?
Love is tender
It looks tough and acts strong
But is riddled with soft spots and sore patches
It listens and symbolizes everything
And it’s selfish: caring only about itself
Keeping itself alive despite society and everyone’s lies
Truthfully, it may be a little blind
And it doesn’t always make the wisest decisions
But it’s something REAL
It’s giving yourself over to someone
Allowing yourself to finally feel
It’s wanting to give a person everything
But realizing that you are all you have to give
It’s being afraid but taking the leap anyway
Love is a variable
It changes between people and over time
It’s the invisible twine that binds
Love is crying when she cries
And doing everything you can to make her smile again
Love is letting someone touch the most tender place of all:
It’s letting them feel your heart
And giving them the power to tear it apart
But trusting them not to
Because while you’re questioning all your questions
You’re pretty sure they’re questioning too.