Gravity

This poem started as an attempt to write a love poem, and in a way, it still is. I began exploring the idea of love—how it motivates our actions and how those actions affect others who love, perhaps in ways different from our own.

Discovering the bridges between why we act out of what we all define as "love" has led to both conflict and healing.

This poem is my way of trying to understand the role love plays in our lives and the weight it carries.

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I've always found it challenging to write about love.

How can I accurately describe the feeling that I have felt.

What others have felt?

A Powerful Force that holds each heart differently

This energy that we all experience individually.

I think love is like gravity. Something early scientists were ready to deny.

Pulling us towards something bigger than ourselves

We were born into this world alone, but what is living if it is not to love and be loved?

The soul is an entity made to acknowledge our effects on others.

Everyday, our souls recognise eachother.

And so we cry, when others cry.

We laugh when others laugh.

And when we hurt…

We hope others hurt for us too.

Love is not selfish but we can love selfishly

Every step we take as we wander into another’s heart leaves something there even as we walk away.

A footprint- Evidence that we were there

And somedays we forget how we effect someone else’s love story.

We forget to respect the love we have until its gone.

And then somedays we remember - even when we don’ t want to.

We remember it as if our minds have been shoved back in time and you experience once more:

a smile.

a kiss.

a touch.

You realise there is a piece of you anchored in that moment forever.

Maybe that's why heartbreak means letting go.

It means floating away into a sea and the vessel that was meant to: carry you

hold you

protect you

from an ocean of loneliness is no longer there.

So we fear it. Love.

We fear its depth.

We fear its unknown and so we let go.

We let ourselves sink because its easier than going through all the effort of trying to stay afloat on our own. Only to drown under the waves of doubt.

“Do you really love me?”

“Do I really know how to love?”

This thing that has so much control is uncontrollable

A universal feeling with a subjective meaning.

That’s why you can only tell somehow you to love you.

You cannot tell someone how to love.

People love differently.

It is something so strong dying of a broken heart is real.

A heart dancing to the music after losing its partner that only dances until it realizes music isn't enough to keep going anymore.

Yet love can be so fragile and fleeting some say it’s slipped right through their fingers.

Love has been used to control.

Love has been a weapon.

Homes broken, Wars have been fought.

Lives lost because of the love of a country or belief.

Believing everyone should love a specific way.

So Love becomes an invisible gun.

When you experience being betrayed by a loved one some have described it as being shot. You said you’d take a bullet for them — never imagining they would be the one to pull the trigger.

So love is power. With it comes responsibility.

You hold a heart in your hands while being willing to let your own lie in the hands of someone whose palms may shake just as yours do.

So love is careful.

We try to hold but not suffocate

To protect but not entrap

To allow ourselves to be held but fear suffocation

Allow ourselves to be protected but fear being trapped.

So love become like gravity -a weight.

Something we carry.

Maybe that’s why it’s called baggage.

Dreading opening the suitcase to take a look at what's stopping us from traveling forward- from taking flight.

Fear of having it searched by potential partners of airing out our dirty laundry so we pretend its not even heavy.

So sometimes love stays a secret.

Choosing to close our eyes and hope for a reality just out of our reach.

We crave it but choose not to chase it. So you sit with it, until it fades away or get you simply get used to it.

Then love becomes regret.

So how will you love?:

Desperately?

Heavily?

All or nothing?

While you are pulled towards the center of what it means for you to love.

Remember Love means you’re alive.

We feel.

We break.

We celebrate.

We mourn.

We long for.

Our souls are an invisible mass that connects us to something we can’t see.

…. so we have to believe.

Because without mass there is no gravity.

And Without love-

there is no Humanity.