Jessica Sabo

LOVE POEM FOR WHAT IT IS

after Rebecca Hazelton

I collect things now: photos on a portable hard drive,
one email, two empty hands, six-tenths of a heart.

There is both an excess and emptiness of your ghost
withdrawing and overflowing which is to say, there’s

nothing unusual in that and maybe it is why I have
these regrets or don’t have more. Virginia summer

was one-sided. This thing-that-once-was is now two
generations deep, is black-ice cement on the bridge

tunnel, a broken guard rail where the jeep used to be,
diving in Black Bay. A fire burns up the California

Coast. Bodies turn into bones along river streets down
south and once, I threw my arms around the swell of the

Atlantic to save you the trouble.

Jessica Sabo (she/her/hers) is an LGBTQ+ poet and former classical ballerina whose poems have appeared in publications by Cathexis Northwest Press, Viewless Wings Press, and 805 Lit + Art, among others. She is also the author of a chapbook, A Body of Impulse, (dancing girl press & studio, 2021). A Virginian at heart, she currently lives in Nevada with her wife and two rescue dogs, one of which has wings.