A collection of “oracular, crystalline, and utterly original” poems wrestling with a life’s shifting social structures and the multifaceted totality of the self (Maggie Millner).

Elizabeth Metzger’s third collection traces both holding on and letting go, tracking the non-linear journeys we take and the daily distances we cross for intimacy. Braiding a dissolving marriage, a son’s medical crisis, and the death of a father, the speaker reconceives loss as transformation and longing as ongoing love, exploring the multiplicity of the self in proximity to others. How do we relate to what we cannot know about those we love? How can we separate from one another without embodying parts of ourselves we haven’t met yet?

The present revives the past, and every ending becomes a devotion to new beginnings as Metzger transforms ordinary domestic ruptures into intimate portals of pleasure and pain. A degenerative disease spurs a creative awakening. A trip to the farmer’s market invites questions of monogamy. An overgrown yard yields a crisis of faith. These poems fall in love with the absences that define us, retracing our chosen roads while following those less traveled and beckoning unlived lives.

Celebrating the ordinary and extraordinary changes we undergo together, this collection explores our most surprising fantasies and deep spiritual yearnings. An honest, intricate, and breathtaking distillation of love’s true nature, The Going Is Forever reminds us that our closest relationships contain endless mysteries, and that there is never just one version of a life.