When Cupid Met Psyche

By Gigi Balita

Memories of love, captured in poetic utterances, reminiscences and remembrances. As recorded, as written, as penned in a pensive, melancholic outpouring of the heart's content. Readers, let us recall that moment in our lives when we first felt the wonder of falling in love. That euphoric, ecstatic, exalted state we seemed to have settled in thro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Jan 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9789360492779

Book preview

Introduction

Who doesn't know about Cupid? The mythical, legendary deity who epitomizes love in the form of a cherubic, winged, playful imp armed with a bow and arrow. Most of us know that mischievous but adorable creature which is responsible in aiming and hitting the hearts of both male and female and make them fall in love by shooting arrow in their cardiae. Unknown to many is the adult man Cupid who fell in love with the mortal Psyche, which, according to legend scratched himself with his own dart. Such is the representation of love in this tale that Psyche was asked to marry her love Cupid to whom she has never laid her sight on. Her kind of love was based on what is felt inside, something coming deeply from the heart, and not entirely from what someone see through her eyes. This kind of love is something one simply feels in the depths of one's innocent heart. As it happens, Psyche blindly fell in love with Cupid without knowing how handsome, how dashing, how good-looking he actually was.

This story serves such an inspiring tale for us humans to realize that love is something intangible, imperceptible and non-physical yet binding and bounded as ever through eternity. This love story of Cupid and Psyche somehow inspired the writer in me on compiling my early poems and anthologize it in one special book specifically designed for particular readers, the hopeless and the hopeful romantics. This kind of love is pure, innocent, almost impeccable. Just like how our youthful hearts started to feel its beat when we were once in our youth, when our hearts fell in love for the first time. We may gain age and years, but the memory of our first love always occupies a most pleasant and memorable place in the nooks of our hearts.

Does this kind of love still exist? Indeed, but rarely now. For somehow people nowadays are probably wiser and have set up priorities based on more practical terms, choosing wealth or fame over love. People in general have become more financially oriented. When the present has long been a little different with all the technologies and financial advancements we gained through time, can we still feel in our hearts that pure, unadulterated, uncorrupted kind of love? The kind of love our grandmothers and grandfathers used to have? Women in our time may have set priorities and put a great deal of effort in establishing a career, yet when it comes to matters of the heart, love still exist the same way. Yes, human love is still the universal idiom conquering all other emotions into paleness.

The love story of Cupid and Psyche, one of the most touching love story probably regarded as the archaic version of Beauty and the Beast, is a tale as old as time yet as enchanting as ever when it was first told. Inspired by this narrative, this book chronicles my own genre of stories through the collection of poetry I wrote in my teens. This book is my own version inspired by the tale of Eros and Psyche, the so-called original fairy tale long before Cinderella, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty was ever written. Somewhere a young girl in me dreamt, made her wishes and discovered her rainbow among a heap of written notes.

In this book, may I capture each heart that has forgotten how to care, and may each heart start to remember how beautiful it feels to be young again and in love. Cupid is my love for writing. Psyche is the soul that urges me to write with all sorts of inspiration. Yes I found my heart and soul in writing, I made them reconcile together and that is where my inner Cupid and Psyche met.

Cupid Boy And Girl Valentine Images - Cupid Png (1368x855)

Part I

Taking my inspiration from Cupid by presenting my readers some of the most romantic poems I've ever written in my youth, at the same time gathering my motivation from Psyche's point of view, listening to one's inner self, the soul. I write in a tone only the soul inside have the urge to express, and I guess somehow that never will I be able to narrate this way again.

This is a collection of poems I wrote when I was in my early teens when I started to write as a freshman at the age of twelve until I graduated in high school. These are my earliest poems, my first attempt at writing in verse and the first poem I wrote aptly titled Search was presented in this chapter.

This chapter should have contained much more poems, probably quadruple or quintuple in volume if only I have not accidentally lost most of it. With much melancholy and sadness, most of my early poems are gone, and I wasn`t able to keep their original copies. Since the contents of this book are my early works and what I would regard as mostly personal, I fairly categorize this with much deeper fondness and regard.

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How to Love

Let me open your eyes

And show you how to love

I will make you see

How to set yourself free.

Let me open your mind

And teach you how to love

I will make you understand

What this feeling is about.

Let me open your heart

And tell you how to love

I will make you feel

Something that is real.

Let me open your arms

And put myself within

I will make you realize

The happiness it can bring.

Let me crave into your being

An emotion that is lasting

I will make you remember

Always how to love forever.

The Way You Are

I love the way you smile

It makes me think you care

I feel somewhat happy

Whenever you smile at me.

I love the way you talk

It's so nice to hear your voice

You never know how I wait

Patiently on your every word.

I love the way you move

With your nice attitude

To see whatever you're doing

I always set my eyes watching.

I love the way you look

I really feel you're wondrous

The world of paradise I embrace

Whenever I see a glimpse of your face.

I love the way you are

Though I really can't understand why

I can't find any reason to think

Why I love you so much like this.

Dream

I lie in this quiet night

Listening to my own heart

I see you as a shining star

In the shadow of my dreams.

I keep on seeing about you

So long that I have this slumber

I'm glad I got a chance to do

Stealing a little lovely dream.

I wander in my gentle sleep

This feeling I have is so deep

Like an evening cloud comforting

My heart floats in my dream.

I spent a thousand dreams before

Nothing's like this from all the rest

You made this one the very best

Dwelling in my endless dream.

I won't let this wonder to end

Don't disturb me and make me awake

When I open my eyes I want to see you

So you'll never be just a dream.

Your Answer

I asked you of a wonderful smile