Between Your Ribs: Love Poems

I love you, darling.
The word love, try to replace it . . .
eventually you will discover love remains the same . . .
It cannot be replaced with any word in our world’s dictionaries.
It is a word with a wonderful mixture of all beautiful meanings.
It plays the sweetest melodies, rhythms, and the underbelly of their range.

Somewhere between stormy passion and haunting despair lies a powerful feeling like no other. Love is a complicated emotion, one that all of us struggle to understand at one time or another.

In her first compilation of poetry in English, Palestinian poet Amany Al-Hallaq shares moving, lyrical verse that reveals all the passionate emotions that accompany falling in love. With an honest, relatable style, Al-Hallaq relies on vivid imagery as she takes an unforgettable journey through love, comparing the powerful emotion to a sweet mango, with its seductive taste, smooth skin, and magnificent fragrance.

Al-Hallaq’s poetry eloquently speaks of love through deviant lust, a luminous smile, and a gentle whisper while positing that through every challenge, true love stands strong and able to withstand any storm—proving that no matter what, it really is sweeter than a mango.