blog of poet, leah umansky

In the Book of Love

When I was a girl I thought that I’d love someone forever, one person, and our love would be stronger than rock. I believed that love conquers all and when I was a girl, I believed in soul-mates, destiny, and fate. I believed in love after death even though some say no:

Freud says “the unconscious.”

Lacan says “the mirror”

Cixous says “just laugh”

Woolf says “a room of one’s own,”

Bronte says “reader, I married him.”

Lawrence was a perv.

Still, I read Wharton and I wanted that crash for Ethan and Mattie. I read Fitzgerald and I wanted those orbed-lanterns to never dim low. When I was a girl, I believed in passion and truth and I believed if I opened my heart like an old fashioned map of the world, love would navigate and steer because as a child I believed in the heart and the way that love is circulatory despite:  perils, crises and death; and as a child I felt love was the steed I would ride out of the suburb and into the book of love where I fed and bathed and made myself this life.

(c) Umansky 2009