Shabbos After Shiva – a poem by Jacqueline Jules

Shabbos After Shiva

The Shabbos after I sat shiva for my son,
I lit candles 18 minutes before sunset
somehow not questioning the point of blessings
when I was burning with the flame I’d lost. 

The crystal candlesticks stood on the sideboard, 
as they had since the day he’d handed them to me
in a paper bag with a grin, “A souvenir for you, Mom, 
found in an Israeli street market.” And like any other 
Friday night I kindled lights as commanded.

Not for any stray belief in a benevolent power,
after watching him wither by bits in a hospital bed, 
but because I needed something in my life
to remain unchanged. So that Friday night 
I covered my eyes and recited Hebrew words 
learned from my mother when I was barely 
taller than her aproned waist.

And somehow it helped—to do what I 
always did at the same time in the same way,
making it possible the next morning to put my feet 
on the floor and choose clothes from the closet.

I still light candles on Friday evenings, 
still clinging to what sustained my own flame
through those first weeks of fresh grief.
 

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at http://www.jacquelinejules.com.