Hello dear I love you but
Don’t get too excited as you are not
The only one.
I have loved before
I have loved a million times
In very many different ways.
It was marvellous my dear
Hope you will find it in yourself
To love, just as much.
As for most it all began
Loving parents since day one
Before even knowing what
Love actually is all about.
As if love was not a choice
But a fact, a condition we are thrust into
Unavoidable for no one
Can ever silence heartbeat’s crescendo
Mute its echoes in our stomachs,
Assuage the thundering reverberations
Getting hold of the entirety of our being.
No one can recant a verity
Let alone the loving nature of our kind.
Loved my siblings too, somewhat had to,
I was always told I should until I grew
To realise I loved them truly
Blood ties aside beyond duty,
I proceeded loving more
I now learnt how to, opened the faucets
And let go.
A cat a dog a goldfish, even a hamster,
Animals and flowers, whales and lilies
I confess my favoured,
Oceans and rivulets, mountains waterfalls
Old cities imbued with history
Counting stories of our people, ancestors
Other humans getting by.
Places and faces, moments made of life.
Loved friends and lovers
Many of whom are still around
My first boyfriend took me to the woods
I still recall the moonless sky.
Songs and movies, culture and society
Taught me I had to find one and only
A unique being to adore,
As if I didn’t have place for more
As if loving two or hundreds
Was ultimately a sin. So I did.
Had two kids, was loyal and faithful,
Though something simply didn’t seem
To add up. Not for me.
Loving one on the long run
Made me miserable as I was unable
To conceive the imposition of a limit
To such an amazing feeling.
Why should I who can
Deprive the rest of us of my
Overflowing abundance
Of care affection and closeness?
Started smiling kissing touching
Everyone, saw their eyes light up in darkness
Despite their many struggles they rekindled
In me, through this torrential stream
Of incandescent yet soothing heat.
I just love to love them all
And so happy you are one.
[Featured painting: Town of Sailors by Tomasz Setowski, 2015]