> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://poetry101.love/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# in love
- URL: https://poetry101.love/in-love/
- Published: 2021-02-14T17:00:34.000Z
- Updated: 2021-02-15T15:07:04.000Z
- Description: by bell hooks
- Author: Melissa Anderson
- Tags: bell hooks, #Import 2026-11-04 19:11

in love  
there are no closed doors  
each threshold  
an invitation  
to cross  
take hold  
take heart  
and enter here  
at this point  
where truth  
was once denied

hooks, bell. [When Angels Speak of Love](https://www.google.com/books/edition/When%5FAngels%5FSpeak%5Fof%5FLove/S61Hwy%5F7hpYC?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=getbook&ref=poetry101.love). United Kingdom, Atria Books, 2007.

### Why I Chose this Poem

I woke up this pandemic morning, thinking about my phone-free childhood, when a knock at the door was the only way we had to contact someone in the neighborhood. Thinking about protocols of texting. About ghosting and vampires, vampires and thresholds, and what exactly prevents vampires from entering uninvited. Perhaps a magic force from the willful refusal to invite them in, a code of honor among the vampires, something intrinsic in the threshold itself.

I was also prompted by yesterday's poem to try to understand my affinity for Audre Lorde's work and my distance from bell hooks'. I know it's something about their poetry that colors how I read their prose. Just minutes after musing on vampires, this was the first bell hooks poem I read.

It leaves me wondering: when we leave the vampire on the porch and gently shut the door, what truths are we turning away from?