LOVE

imi
Love has been showing me its other cheek.
Wherever I follow its trace, it goes missing.
Is it me not playing the part right,
or am I auditioning for the wrong casting?

Lyon Vert
I’m that cast,
I feel I’m worthy,
but the directors turn me away.

I guess they’re blue from love,
and most of their days are grey,
but hey, someone eventually picks,
but it needs not be on this exact date.

Sara da Encarnação

But I have seen the trapdoor’s hinge.
Heard the hollow under the floorboards.
Felt applause that sounded too much like thunder
over an empty sea.

Ray1on1
I keep rehearsing tenderness
in empty rooms
that never answer back.

Mark Crutchfield
Sometimes I wonder if I’m wearing the wrong shoes,
as love keeps pushing me away from you.

Gary L Taylor
Love sends questions of me:
do I know what it is?

Can I truly accept it?
Does it help assuage pain
brought by spirits of
the love of days long gone?

Mark Crutchfield
All we need is one more day.

The stranger
I kept on following and following,
until the trail dissolved and disappeared.

Kristina Ray
Am I looking for love?

imi
It never belonged to my world,
not because it did not want to,
but because I never allowed it to settle.

Alix@IN2LProds
Love has only one address:
your heart and mine.
It may last a moment,
or it may last a while.
I once saw it living in my heart.
It was quiet,
and it settled itself gently.

We were in a time of happiness.
Later, it bought a one-way ticket
and left my heart.
I turned away and learned
to be quiet.

The stranger
I stood there, still, just waiting—
when suddenly I saw them, hand in hand:
love walking side by side with love.

I knew then the harsh, clean truth:
I am not meant to chase its trace.
I’m here to learn the art of cherishing myself,
enjoying my own company.
If love decides to visit, I will open every door;
if it decides to abandon,

I don’t really care anymore

Tangled Words
What’s love wrapped in foil and wilting petals?
Love is not a day.
Love is footprints after the waves.

Love is holding on
even when they’ve become a ghost.

Dorie Snow/雪多丽
Though fleeting, I’ve seen love.

In all its forms—
the loss, the hope, the pain, the glory…
In the end, it’s all one story.
Love is the greatest of these,
the most common enemy of disdain,
the gentle breeze to soothe a soul
after the fall of another dark wall.

MeMaria
The hollow that hits you the second it’s over.
The tears turning bitter the moment they’re swallowed.
The times we forget that all time is borrowed.

Kim Williams, M.Div.
Love is not the vow at the altar,
only bright in polished air,
it is the staying when the embers dim
and no one else is there.

Reisson Poh
There was no revelation in it.
No swelling music.
Just the soft arithmetic of two people
removing weight from each other’s hands.

Cash Flow Collective
I think that he has been a failure since day one,
only now are some realizing it.
But he is reaching out again, with a different tone—
a velvet script, all honeyed lines and practiced moan.
Same actor, new mask, same empty house he’s known,

Sara da Encarnação

Then let the curtain rise without me.
I am done rehearsing tenderness
for an audience that forgets my name.
Done memorising lines written
in disappearing ink.
Love keeps changing costumes backstage,
powdering its bruises, adjusting the light,
swearing this time the ending will hold.

Terod Naej
Love is the wound and the wisdom it brings,
the hush after chaos, the ache with wings.
It breaks us open where light can start,
carves its initials deep in the heart.

It is the seeker and the sought the same,
the quiet ember and the roaring flame.
It asks no armor, it crowns no throne,
it makes us tremble, yet calls us home.

PancakeSushi
Turn away gently, O love,
cast me in shadow.

Forget me, that you may be forgotten.
Exile me from your mind.
Pluck the threads from my seams
and unmake me.

Odel Asseille
Love,
come—let me make war on you,
tear you from old shapes,
reshape you with bare hands
like a craftsman with his clay.

Come—let us defy the world
and its worn-out illusions.

Alix@IN2LProds
Love is formless.
You can’t touch it, only feel it.
It cannot be controlled.
It cannot be predicted.
It exists only in your heart,
felt toward
something, someone, some object—
and there, it begins to grow.

Sometimes love is mutual.
Sometimes it is one-sided.
Sometimes someone loves you.
Sometimes you love someone.

The language of love
has no right or wrong.
Only its flow.

Terod Naej
Love is the mirror that dares us to see.
The lover we chase has always been

imi
Loss taking the shape
of the reflection I faced in every mirror.
A note landed where it hurt,
and I turned inward.

Mack Devlin
I live to love love,
but sometimes it doesn’t love me.
And every time I try to get away clean.
But love is a mark that doesn’t scrub out.
It informs every moment forward,
feeds into my doubt.

Oh love, why do you so often leave me forgotten?
Why does the fruit of my vast blooming tree grow rotten?

Sara da Encarnação

So let the masks speak to each other.
Let velvet promise what bones cannot keep.
I will sit where the house lights never reach
and learn the quiet art
of not mistaking echoes for voices.

imi
I consumed my own flame,
offering it to others.

I have been pursuing,
since the day I was born,
a love that never asked to be searched for.

Kristina Ray
Or is love looking for me?
What if my conversation with love is just me talking to myself?
What if I am love in disguise?
What if love is not somewhere far off,
but interwoven into my being?

Regolith
Love is oceans forged of fire.
To love is to drown in open flame.
Love is a gift that whispers regret.
To love is to dance along the edge of pain.
Love is heaven built from ash.
To love is to drink a poisoned kiss.
Love is a night that offers no shade.
To love is knowing you will be consumed,
and choosing it the same.

Girl on a Downtown Train
Let love love thyself
for it to bloom on another
with this self,
body of clay.

Exactly perfect is made.
Do this for love of lovers,
to be fair and true to another.

L. Cohen
Love, I am talking to you.
You are the sun and I am the sky.

You are burning to hold,
but I will never let you die.
You are so bold, but I will let you shine,
keeping to the background, and this is all fine.
At night, though, I become the moon,
and looking into your eyes, I wonder what you will do.

imi

I offered you my light
for the sake of your glow.
For every sunset,
I died for you,
and with each sunrise,
I just lay there.

I sought my healing where it did not belong,
chasing relief
that never meant to stay.

I was the thief,
stealing my own treasure,
asking life to erase my wounds
so I could be worthy of love.

Monica Fernandes
But love was in me all along.

MeMaria
St Valentine’s Day; just one day of the year.
But loving ourselves is hourly. Daily. All year.

pm
Love is the desire my soul needs,
love is the intention my word reads,
love is the philosophy my heart treats,
love is the game my mind leads.
Through the past, into the divine.

Ulysses Santillan
You can’t bury love.
Because you carry love.
My eyes turn to hearts.
What’s your part?
Just to hold your soul
so we can roll.
I see your eyes,
and now I’m blind.
Love is what I find,
and that’s not a lie.

Ilias Shepherd Marrow
Love is a verb with breath, heart, and breathing soul.

Reisson Poh
Somewhere along the way,
love stopped echoing.
It began, simply,
to stay.

imi
I stopped abandoning myself,
the key appeared—
and I stepped into an empty room.

The curtain rose.

I did not bow.

I was no longer waiting
to be chosen.

This began with a single word.

I wondered whether I had been auditioning for love my whole life, waiting to be chosen. I wrote the first lines without knowing what would follow.

Then you all stepped in.

What unfolded was not a single definition of love, but a chorus. Some of you wrote of fire and ash. Some of you wrote of mirrors. Some of you wrote of ghosts, vows, tenderness, bitterness, surrender. Some of you reminded us that love is not a day. Some of you insisted it is a verb.

Reading this back, I realise something quiet but certain: love is not one story. It is a conversation.

And somewhere along that conversation, I stopped abandoning myself.

Thank you for building this with me. Thank you for adding your voice. Thank you for making something that did not exist this morning.

If love visits, may we open the door.
If it leaves, may we remain.

-Imi

Due to a platform limitation, I couldn’t add everyone as official byliners. I’ve added as much as I could, and I’ll ensure every author is officially listed as a byliner once the platform issue is resolved.