Nevertheless
by Jessica Jacobs
This time is sacred for the good or bad
it could become but isn’t yet. For the phone
that doesn’t ring but might.
Ma nishtana ha-laila
ha-zeh mi-kol ha-leilot?
Why is this night
different than all other nights?
It’s not. Only more
visible. More clearly the cusp each night is—
off the wrong curb, one moment when the heart forgets
to keep time. But such questions are essential.
During Passover, they enable the mitzvah of telling
the story that takes us from slavery
to freedom.
Even when celebrating alone, we are instructed
to ask ourselves these questions, to become
both the teller and the other
to whom the story is told:
And on the night of the tenth plague,
Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a lamb
and mark with its blood their doorways
so that the Angel of Death
might pass over.
Then we eat bitter
herbs to commemorate the pain
of those not passed by.
Why others, though, of such consideration. And sometimes questions JESSICA JACOBS is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, a memoir-in-poems of love and marriage, and Pelvis with Distance, a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including Orion, New England Review, Guernica, and The Missouri Review. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock-climbing instructor, bartender, and professor, and now serves as Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown. Find her on Twitter at @jessicalgjacobs.
and not us?
I know nothing that makes us worthy
are all I have left. Like what else is there
except to move forward?
We found
our new home while her tumor
still nestled in bed between us—benign
but imperative reminder. We married
our books, packed and hauled,
walked our new rooms in wonder. And in hope
some trace remained, I ran my hands
along every doorway we entered.