Jacob Have I Loved

Jacob Have I Loved 

I.

I think I lost the genetic lottery,
my cousin told me

in one of the last conversations
we had. He was thirty-three,

our parents twins. We were living
again the few good stories.

Tell me the one
about Esau.

II.

Tell me about God hating him.
I want it to be a problem

of translation: language or time.
I have never met an Esau,

and what chance
does a born person have,

though we name them all Jacob?
Tell me my own daughter

doesn’t wonder
if she’s naked.

She is running through the yard
explaining something to her sister.

I want to keep her
from hiding 

in the understory
as Eve did

with Adam, children
believing they could

disappear
from God.

III.

The absurdity of hiding anywhere:
I want to show her

how to hold her fear
like a child of her own

how to ask it, between sobs,
where it hurts.

IV.

Can I hold you when you’re born?
my daughter asks. She is sitting on my lap.

We’re sorting photos of my cousin,
every one in time,

collapsed. Not a good shot
at any age.

I hold up the best, a young man,
to take a picture

of the picture for the obituary.
I orbit it for some time,

trying to remove my body
from the light,

believing the shadow on his face
is from me.

V.

I’ve tried to remove my body.
How afraid have I been

of being found in it,
unblessed?

There is no reason for beauty,  
no metric

that holds—
a blessing

in itself.
How we look

to one another.
Don’t you have

even one blessing
left for me?

VI.

The shadow is in the photo,
on him, in the room

where he stood without me,
before I was born.

VII.

In our yard it’s getting dark;
shadows are blessings

that diffuse all the glare
from the heavens.

In the cool of the evening
they heard God

walking around in the garden:
Where are you?

My daughter’s face is a clean window.
No glare to mirror

or ask if I am naked,
if she is Jacob—

only this reflection
in one another’s eyes.

 "Jacob Have I Loved" first appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of VQR. 

Object Permanence 
 

My daughter learns I’m there
even when I am not. I name this trust,

and I begin to exist
in her as she began

to exist in me
before I saw her.

You were thirty-three, your father and
my mother twins, our cells

drawn to face one another,
as the image of the vase:

two straying lines,
figure-and-ground.

It is joy to be hidden,
said Winnicott

a disaster 
not to be found.

One line erased, the vase
disappears, the face

that still sees sees a field: empty
and full of grasses,

a drawing of nothing,
of everything, undivided: the only story

of permanence I believe.
I name it trust.

But grammar
is deep—I Love

wants You,
my cells, their twins,

your heart,
the vase,

your missing face
I’m still breathing toward,

still drawing. Close,
each time I look.