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.