Love Poem

I’ve always said that poetry is the essence of feeling,

And since love is what we call the strongest feeling,

I’ve always wanted to write a love poem.

The poem should have rhythm, and lots of nice words that rhyme with love,

Like dove, and glove, and maybe some almost-rhymes like cove and move.

The problem is, love also rhymes with shove.

And love doesn’t always fit the meter.

How do you rhyme about the way you smile

Every time you move your arm

Because you’re wearing the bracelet he gave you for Christmas

And you feel it move on your wrist?

And it’s just not possible to make the ache you get when

You haven’t seen him since Tuesday

Get squashed into the rhythm of the piece,

Iambic Pentameter.

Even one of these modern free-verse poems, the kind that don’t even have lines, they just don’t do it justice, because they just aren’t beautiful enough, just aren’t smooth and even enough, to capture the peace that you feel when his arms wrap you in solace. They lack the constant, even, steady rhythm of his heartbeat in your ear.

No matter how perfect the rhythm,

It never seems perfect enough.

No matter how sweetly you rhyme it,

It still seems to come out rough.

And the most beautiful words fall short of what happens inside

When he looks at you

As if you were the only person in the world.

So I guess I’ll never write a love poem.