What is Love?

Day 3 is supposed to be a poem about weddings, this will take me a minute because I have been contemplating the ideas of weddings and what their presence means in a patriarchal society. So for now another poem to begin the day with.

“What is Love?”

How can we ever believe love is real,

If we accept love as

“The great unknown”

“A great mystery”

“Something indefinable”,

“Unexplainable,”

“So extraordinary,

There are no words for love.”

“You have to search for love and when you find it you’ll just know”

These ambiguities have confused our understandings

Left us standing

In a world where Love does not exist for all

And we teach each other that love is a feeling that comes and it goes,

It is not constant- and in our life time not all of us will know

It’s no wonder so many don’t believe in love

We’ve had to battle our way through all the game playing and rules,

False definitions, leaving us feeling like fools

And through it we’ve learned to believe that love...

Is fleeting

It happens only with chance meetings

Its not something of choosing

If you don’t sacrifice and give up yourself, you’ll end up losing

It comes to us without expecting

It’s two hearts connecting,

But it doesn’t last forever

Some people can live their whole life never

Even knowing love

And people change in love

They don’t remain in love

They lose interest-The flame dies

Leading to infidelity and lies

Love is disposable,

If it doesn’t work,

You can drop it, throw it away

You can find another,

if there’s more out there there’s no reason to stay

This consumes us

And leaves us in a place where we don’t trust love

Because love is pain

So we sever our bonds

And only heartbreak is maintained

We erase memories,

and phone numbers

and “un-friend” love

We box it away,

we burn photos and letters,

we forget love

We build up walls,

we mirror rejection with more rejection

Its our only protection-

To break down love as something that wasn’t,

will never be true

We’ve even lost value

in the language of speaking “I love you’s”

It’s easier for us to cling to ideas that love isn’t real

When in this world many don’t know it

and its absence is all they feel

And we are left with thoughts that

love does not fulfill

And the truth is it can’t, until

We can allow ourselves to know it

Beyond a feeling, but as an action-

Because to know love, we have to grow it

We have to give and remember to receive

We have to learn to speak our needs

Speak our truths without fear

We have to listen and be present

Through laughter and tears

We have to move against neglect and abusing

These actions negate love and oppose it,

and we end up losing

Not only love, but precious life

Husband beating up on wife,

Parent beating up on child, child grows

And never knows

Love without this

“I do this because I love you,”

“This hurts me more than it does you”

It’s becomes a cycle

We have to stop being cowards and using love as an excuse

We have to learn from our mistakes and pay our dues

We have to know love is willingness, and choice

That in relationships of love, we always have a voice

We have to seek justice in love

Let love be as love does

Create intention to grow your beloved and your self

In body, mind, and spiritual health

Support the journeys of your spirits in connection

and apart from each other

Teach one another

Through kindness, joy, compassion and equanimity

Being mindful, is what love needs to be

Love is not just a feeling its tangible,

all our senses can know it- hear, smell, taste and see

Love thrives in all we do, all we are and all we hope to be

Stop replacing love with power, control, pride and greed

We have to know love is stronger than that

and we have to believe...

That Love is real

And if we act and live in love, it can be better defined

Only then can love be yours to have

as much as it can be mine.