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I LOVE by Maru Garcia


 From the editor:

What does it mean to really love someone?

Perhaps the best way to answer that is to look at ourselves when we are feeling loved by someone. What is that experience like? For me it’s a feeling of amazement that someone loves me in spite of myself!

When I am feeling really loved, the person whom I’m feeling loved by, does so in spite of all my defects, all my frailties, all my mistakes and imperfections. They love me through my darkest nights and regardless of all the emotional baggage I come with, they do not abandon me. 

This kind of love leaves me in awe, for it is all embracing. It is patient. It is not intent on changing me. It is not forceful. It does not withdraw when I don’t meet its conditions, because it has none. It is something I can rely on no matter what!

Real love knows that I am a package deal: with pretty parts and ugly ones too. It receives me as I am at any given moment in time, even when I’m a handful, even when I’m upset, even when I’m lost. And it does so without ever diminishing. In fact, this love does just the opposite. It grows! So it is anything but stagnant, and it blossoms in the most dynamic, energizing ways.

True love is forgiving and knows that I, myself, am not perfect at loving, yet loves me anyway.

This kind of love is reciprocal and flows in two directions just as enthusiastically. It is not unrequited love. And it does not leave to find something higher, or better. For true love has faith that the purest love can be cultivated even between human hearts, as we are all divine at our cores.

Real love brings you in such proximity with another person that sometimes you forget where you end and they begin! Pablo Neruda -one of my favorite all-time poets- describes that kind of intimacy with another soul here, in his “100 Love Sonnets”:

 “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul…I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

I believe that we each may have different conceptions of what love is. So many cultures and traditions around the world and across time have attempted to define love, to encapsulate love’s boundlessness within the limits of words. Some speak of different kinds of love, and degrees of loving. Some say that one love is more pure than others.

 I believe we all long to be loved, and are trying our best to love others.

It is our nature. It is at the core of why we exist. As I see it, the closer we are to loving purely, the closer we are to being ourselves and fulfilling our very life’s purpose.

So, as far as perfect lovers goes: I think we are all “works-in-progress”. And on our way there, my friend Maru reminds us in her poem below that it’s good for us to remember that: “Unless love includes radical acceptance, it should be called something else.” I think I'll meditate on this today, as I take inventory of what’s in my heart.
Photography 'This Way Together" by Jessica Christ

I LOVE

I love what I see and what you veil
What you show or insinuate
Who you are or I choose to imagine that you are

I love you in what you lack and in what you are more than enough
I love what you share of you and what you hide
Your questions and replies
Your doubts, your certainties and masks

I love you in your simplicity and confusion
In what you shout and what you screen

I love what you ask for and what you give away
Your memories and obliviousness
Your laughter and your discontent

I love your scents, your taste and breath
What you love and what you escape.

I love you in this spot and in the distance
I love you for the love of it

Without a catch, without a map
If I were able not to love you, I still would

I love you with the pride of loving you
I love you because I was born to

I love you in your insanity and your stillness
I love you in your joys and your despair
In your heaven and your hells
I love you how you are, exact
I just love you, intact.

Maru Garcia was born and raised in Mexico City. As a kid, she wanted to be invisible when she grew up or work for the circus as a contortionist so she could fit silently in little boxes. She has a degree in Nutrition and believes in veganism as a walking statement of love. She is a very imperfect yogi. Maru loves animals more than anything in the whole wide world, and is a strong advocate for the animals right to just be animals! There is often a doggie or a kitty or a palm tree hidden in her purse on the way to safety. She often gets in trouble for saying exactly what she thinks and feels, no editing, that is her trademark. Maru lives in Playa del Carmen with her 3 dogs, 2 birds and one cat. She does not know yet why she writes. You may contact her on facebook here

~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~ 

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