By. Molly Gisela

When I feel love, I feel a hesitant warmth take over. A natural pessimist, I approach love carefully, watching over my shoulder for any sudden attack. I endure love but also soak in it. It oozes out of me, and I suck it in from others. I retaliate from rejection. I bathe in admiration. I love how jarring love can be and fear its emptiness at times. Love is as dark as it is light, as filling as it is a leech on my skin, like a dementor taking all the happiness out from inside me. It is also a fuzzy touch and a sopping kiss, but a horrible look down the hallway of the future of goodbyes that stare ahead of me. Love, to me, is frantic and exciting. The lightest and heaviest weight I will ever feel.

A Professor of mine, a photographer, offered some beautiful advice to his students on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. He insisted that when photographing a subject, a sole person, and you wish to capture an emotion, do not ask for the literal. When he hopes to see a subject emote happiness and capture their smile, he tells them to imagine something warm and soft. On the contrary, to capture grief or sorrow, he tells his subject to imagine something heavy and stiff. When you, a writer, wish to capture love, loss, grief, lust, or any synonyms of the latter, a similar exercise may be appropriate.

Poetry

Let’s start with something profound and usually difficult to write about. Try to write about a relationship that ended, but you are grateful it did…

Flash Fiction

Butterfly time! We’ve all been there. It’s a mixture of excitement, fear, euphoria, and a bit of nausea. Try writing about a meaningful first encounter or a “meet cute” …

Creative Non-Fiction

Now let’s get personal. Choose a meaningful event in your life that someone else remembers differently. Describe both memories and debate the differences. Who was in the right, and who was in the wrong? Was anyone in the wrong? Why do you think you remember it differently?