Revisiting Gibran’s “On Love”: A Feminine Re-Vision of Surrender and Self

Understanding Gibran’s “On Love”

Khalil Gibran’s On Love — from his timeless work The Prophet — has stirred the hearts of readers for nearly a century. Written from the voice of the prophet Almustafa, it speaks of love as a sacred, consuming force — one that both exalts and crucifies, wounds and awakens.

Yet reading it through a contemporary lens, and especially through a woman’s body, evokes deeper questions:

Is this poem spoken from a man to men?
How does a woman’s experience of love — with all its risks, labor, and exhaustion — change the meaning of surrender?

Love as a Divine Force — and a Human Burden

Gibran’s vision of love is mystical: a current of divine fire that carves away what is false until only truth remains. But for many women, love has also meant overextension — tending, giving, forgiving beyond what is replenished.

A feminine reading of the poem doesn’t reject its truth; it grounds it.
It asks: Can love transform without consuming? Can surrender coexist with safety and selfhood?

A Feminine Re-Vision of “On Love”

Below is my reimagined version of Gibran’s poem — spoken in a woman’s voice.
It keeps the reverence of the original, but roots it in the body, the earth, and the wisdom of boundaries.

On Love — A Feminine Re-Vision

When love calls to you,
listen — but listen with your whole body.
Do not mistake its burning for your own undoing.
Let it draw you close,
but only as near as your roots can bear.

For love will change you, yes,
but you were never meant to be consumed.
Let it carve away what is false,
not what is sacred.
Let it plough the soil of your heart,
but remember — you are the gardener too.

If love asks you to bow,
bow only to the truth within you.
If it asks for sacrifice,
let it be the sacrifice of old fears,
not the quiet death of your voice.

Love is not your master.
It is your mirror,
your teacher,
your tide.
It rises and falls,
and still you remain — shore,
whole, steady, ancient.

Do not chase love,
nor command it.
Tend to the garden of your being
and love will find its way to bloom there.

When love wounds you,
let the blood be blessing, not depletion.
When love fills you,
drink, but do not drown.

For love is the rhythm of the world,
and you are its instrument — not its offering.

Reclaiming the Threshing-Floor

In Gibran’s poem, the “threshing-floor” represents love’s fierce purification — the place where joy and sorrow are separated, where the soul is stripped bare.
But a woman might read that differently:

Yes, I have stood upon your threshing-floor. I have been broken open in love’s name. But I will not call every breaking sacred. I will not mistake depletion for devotion.

This re-vision honors transformation but refuses harm. It’s love with agency — love that creates space for the self to remain whole.

Why I Rewrote the Poem

When someone shared On Love with me, it lingered.
Its beauty was undeniable — but I also felt a quiet ache, the echo of all the times women have been asked to surrender beyond safety, to mistake disappearance for devotion.

So I wrote back.
Not to correct Gibran, but to let the poem speak through a woman’s body — through what it means to love and be changed without being consumed.

This version keeps Gibran’s reverence but roots it in the body — in what it feels like to love and be transformed without being erased.