Love in Ten Lines

Love was here once
before. A wild love,
taken by love in
stride. Untamed love skipping
across the pond, love
sinking under water, love
drowning. Love caught in
love’s own overwhelming throat.
Love crying, streaming down
cheeks. Love brushed away.

A photo I took while on the road last year. This is pretty Castlegar, BC.

Beautiful Anarette challenged me to write a poem about love in ten lines. You can read hers here! Love is always an interesting subject to write about, and always revealing. Here are the guidelines:

  • Write about love using only 10 lines.
  • Use the word love in every line.
  • Each line can only be 4 words long.
  • Nominate 10 or so others who are up for the challenge.
  • Let them know about the challenge.
  • Title the post, Love in Ten Lines
  • Include a quote about love ( this can be your own)
  • You may write in any language

When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.”

― Albert Einstein

I nominate all of you who are reading this to partake in the challenge. Leave a link to your poems in the comments and share your words!

49 thoughts on “Love in Ten Lines

  1. That is a great poem. You have a such a lovely unique way of describing things: “Love crying, streaming down cheeks.” We are spreading love just by writing about it 🙂

  2. Really like what you did with the 10 lines (clearly you grasped the concept better than I did when I tried it – Ugh, wanna go back and re-do my own now…). Great quote, too. The whole post really resonates. Awesome.

    1. Thanks 🙂 I was thinking this particular challenge would be an interesting one to revisit in a few months and see how different it comes out.

  3. Ahhhh Love… A frequent theme of my Poetry (ever the Romantic me)… Beautifully done Milady ❤

    1. thank you 🙂 my own reflections on love seem to change each time I tackle the subject… this was a particularly interesting writing challenge in that regard.

      1. As it should be. Whenever we reflect on any kind of feeling we are always viewing it through the lens of our current mood. I think that only by seeing it in all its varieties can we really appreciate a feeling’s “richness”.

  4. Love is the growing warmth that I feel,
    Love is the touchstone of life when it’s real,
    Love is the moment in which we are one,
    Love is the smile and the tears that will come,
    Love is the promise finally achieved,
    love is the gifting for having believed,
    Love is the lover that touches my heart,
    Love is the other who knew from the start,
    I was worthy of love every time I forgot,
    Always a constant, forever the same, love is the truth that has no other name.

  5. Mmm, the pain of love. I would have written something similar, but I believe you said it perfectly. You just have this absolutely magical way with limited word counts. I seem to need 100,000 words to convey what you do so concisely in 40. But to your poem, at least there are dogs, right? 😉

    1. Thank you (although there’s no such thing as better in poetry ;)) .. I’ll have to go find yours! It was a great challenge, wasn’t it?

  6. Not ready to post this on my blog,
    as I haven’t even dared speak my feelings
    in this relationship.

    In fact, I’m not sure I knew this until I read your post.

    Love in 10 lines:

    Love surprised me when
    Love backed into me
    I wasn’t seeking love
    Didn’t name it love
    Love was buried and
    Denied, love suppressed, rejected
    And passion pushed love
    Aside and yet love
    Bloomed; love took hold
    Love wouldn’t let go

    1. Absolutely beautiful and actually I can totally relate to the surprise. This challenge brings out some pretty awesome pieces of writing I must say. ❤

      …and definitely can tell us something about where our hearts are at. When I wrote this poem 2 years ago it seemed to come out of me from nothing, and when I read it now I can see how much it actually reveals about my life at the time and what was to come…

      1. Thank you, Heather! Besides my “regular fiction” I was writing an erotica blog during the long desert of singleness and short encounters. Now that this “strange mystery” has taken me by surprise, my writing has radically changed. This may be my first real adult relationship between real peers. I’m in the undiscovered country.

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