In other words, it seems like love has left you
because, perhaps, someone has.

Because it feels as if:

(choose your metaphor):
—you’re alone at the bottom of the cold, dark sea, or
—a great bird has just slammed into your chest and made
off with your trembling heart, or
—the gray haze of grief has wrapped its arms around you
too tightly to be comforting.

So start there. Write every cliché you’ve heard or imagine
about love putting on its fancy shoes and click-clacking
its way out the door. Be sure to include where this hits you
in the body—stomachs are overused, so consider, say, the elbow.

Strong verbs are a must, so sure, head for the thesaurus,
a vintage volume anchoring a high shelf. Take it down,
appreciate its heft, all the language it contains, and
remember the too-many-to-count times you’ve used it
to find the just-right word.

Make a list of those strong verbs and, while you’re at it,
images of the beloved. Hair blowing in the wind should be
avoided, since it, too, runs high on the cliché scale.
Ditto for soft lips.

But you cannot miss if you describe the scene of her final
breaths or the distinctly oaky odor of his skin or the texture
of the four-legged’s fur,

if you show us the particulars of personhood (yes,
beloved animals count) that made her or him or them
so worthy of your precious affection.

Throw in a place name. Or their name, if you can bear to
see it on the page. Maybe even if you can’t. You may cry,
but you likely won’t die. And if you do, you’ll have gone out
writing, which is never a bad thing—leaving these artifacts
of human creativity, of what’s inside us,

which is to say, leaving the crumbs of love behind
as we walk down a final metaphorical path into
the who knows what, the who knows where.

•••

(Thanks to Natalie Goldberg, who, in her classic, “Writing Down the Bones,” urges writers to keep writing no matter what—adding that even if you die, you’ll go out writing. And thanks to the equally classic poet Molly Fisk for the prompt.)