Jessica Jacobs

AND ABRAHAM CAME TO EULOGIZE SARAH AND TO WEEP FOR HER

—Genesis 23:2

God, she was so beautiful as to be
dangerous, a beacon for all who’d take
my place, who’d take her from me. It was time
that whittled us to these sad bags of sticks.

Yet once, in the lateness of our lives, I knew
again the musk of her hair, the lush ghost
of her young skin. We could have been
any age, any two people unbound

by God’s promises. What is long love
if not a reliquary for the selves the other
sheds, a reflecting pool shining back your
shared past, where their wishes long forgotten

flash bright from the bottom? Even
as we mourn, love gives us back to ourselves.

JESSICA JACOBS is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way); Pelvis with Distance (White Pine); and Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books /Penguin Random House), co-authored with Nickole Brown. She is Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal. Her collection in conversation with the Book of Genesis is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2024.