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by Jessica Jacobs Though I want to give you only kindness, there’s often an age between what I want and who I am. Yet how many times can you cry on my chest before something good grows there? Redwoods thrive in acid soil; summon that weight, those stiff-fingered roots to skewer my ribs and prime the rusted pump in my chest. Into that age, let me grow: a ring for each year, marking boom and drought and flood. Let me anchor further, into your roots; make me part of something greater. Let me grow strong enough that even when fallen I can be of use to you— rough lumber for rafters and joists, a roof for the drum of this evening’s insistent rain. A cross-section from my trunk set to spin on the phonograph—a record of what has passed, playing the music of what is to come. A song for each year I’ll learn to love you better.  photo by Lily Darragh This poem is from Jessica Jacobs' collection Take Me with You, Wherever You're Going, forthcoming from Four Way Books in March 2019. Her collection Pelvis with Distance, a biography-in-poems of Georgia O'Keeffe, was winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, editor, and professor, and is now the Associate Editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, and you can find more of her work at www.jessicalgjacobs.com.
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