Where Love Goes

"The mystery, that no one knows / Where does love go when it goes?" -- Lera Lynn

It often leaves the way
of a single pearl earring,
lost to an unknown trench

beneath the upholstery,
that no compass
or map can divine.

Sometimes it goes
to live with seashells
and keys for lost locks

in a shortbread tin
of flotsam that Oxfam
can't sell.

I've known it to wait – 
asleep in a stolen snapshot
or staked out on that bench –

for a brief spark
to light what little kindling
still lingers on the hearth.