So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.

[Poetry]

                                                                                                          —Genesis 29:20

And he watered her flock and kissed her mouth,
וַיַּ֕שְׁקְ  wayashq and וַיִּשַּׁ֥ק  wayishaq, binding care with the carnal, 
their muzzles warm beneath his tending hands, 
her mouth bright as the nectar of pomegranates.

Desideratum is a word for something wanted
or needed, whose root means both 
“to find a lack of” and “to miss,” binding 
the discovery of an absence 
                              with the already active longing for it: 
                    our greatest needs indwelt within us 
long before we begin to name them. 
The lack of you 

alive in me long before 
I knew your face.

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books), winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/ PenguinRandomHouse), which she co-authored with her wife Nickole Brown. Unalone, her collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis will be out from Four Way Books in 2024. Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal, she is the founder of Yetzirah, a literary organization for Jewish poets.