"Searching For The City Of Love"

"I woke up … in a hostel to expect nothing less than to discover the beautiful city of Barcelona. But then I met you. … Maybe the fortune teller forgot to say that if I were to fall in love with a traveler like you, we would wash away in the Mediterranean Sea along with our footprints in the sand."

"Searching For The City Of Love" ($13.99 in paperback from AuthorHouse; also for Amazon Kindle), by Anna Quimpo Maguire (facebook.com/annaquimpomaguire), presents in free verse and prose poems a quiet meditation about love's loss and memory's place. It is a journey of realization.

The eighteen-year-old Paradise author is the owner of a blog called Three States of Mind (threestatesofmind.tumblr.com), which features her poetry.

She began writing after taking a poetry workshop when she was twelve, and hasn't stopped. In an email, she observes that "free verse poetry gives people the ability to raise their voice without rules. I would wish for young writers to not be afraid to share their work."

In "Searching," the poet comes to terms with what is not to be: "You were my every wish// That I thought would be granted/ But we woke up from our dream/ And the universe pulled you away/ I thought your love was promised to me// You and I never came true."

Each poem is set off as a small chapter accompanied by an evocative image. "Maybe Barcelona should be called the city of love. I've fallen in love with this place, and you've made me love it even more."

But "You left for Morocco this morning, just like I'm leaving to go home to California in 2 weeks. … Our hearts wander just like we do. It's the price you have to pay being a traveler."

And then, in another poem: "You can find magnificence in every part of the world/ Wandering is not measured in distance/ You just have to open your eyes."

"My dreams are embedded in the sand," the poet writes, "I am the waves that collide with the shoreline/ Washing into the land/ I will float away eventually/ And drift to every coast/ To find another dream."