“My Reasons to Love You” by Ángeles F. Hernández

My reasons to love you,

Are not more than these that my heart gives me,

Indeed, my words, my worries and not the reason,

My anguish as I seek you,

And my ability to find you, love;

Without you knowing me yet

Let me love you and know you

Move aside the mountain of prejudicial norms,

Let me love you, even against the world,

In the sleeplessness and solitude, hearing more at the insistence;

As a little girl who doesn’t understand the course of time

Things that are not important at seventeen

I have no reasons to love you, they say

That I shouldn’t speak to you, go out with you

You and I know, but they don’t know,

That love is free

Love is the flower,

The soft fragrance on your shirt

Awakening the senses

It is the colour of the sky after it rains

Hold me,

Because like this, in my adolescence;

In what I know and what I don’t know,

I find reasons to love you

But why do these ties of love they all intend to break up?

My heart, proudly fights such rudeness

The antagonism that leaves me in an abyss of uncertainty

Either of punished insolence

Or of rules which I do not accept

I look for you nonetheless, and I wait for you

Thinking that nobody knows it,

In this beginning which love brings;

That seems to be uncertain,

For which I’m punished,

But which beats beautifully in my heart

Sometimes I lose myself, without finding you

But there is a refuge in my anguish;

Indeed, the desolate words,

Those ones that give me comfort

Those ones that while longing your heart I write

Words, pages in my books,

Poems,

Words with the scent of a flower,

Soaked in tears, wrapped in the wings of hope

Adorned with rose petals inside the book;

And in my notebook once more I write,

Your name, my love

Ángeles Flores Hernández is a writer, visual artist and songwriter.  Her first poetry anthology, 20 Poemas Desesperados y Una Canción de Amor / 20 Desperate Poems and One Love Song is a bilingual book which was published in September of 2014 and is now available at the Mississauga Central Library (here). Her first major exhibit presented paintings of abstract expressionism at the Mississauga Central Library in January 2015 and most recently by Visual Arts Mississauga’s Art in Motion, an exhibit for the 2015 Pan Am & Parapan Am Games. She shares her literary achievements, visual art exhibits and her life as a runner through her blog here.   

Ángeles’ son Nate Sheppard has produced and directed The Unframed Window – A Short Film for Autism Awareness (see here).

See Brian Henry's schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Algonquin Park, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Cambridge, Collingwood, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, London, Midland, Mississauga, Newmarket, Niagara on the Lake, Orillia, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Thessalon, Toronto, Windsor, Halton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.