Valentines: “DEAR JOHN” poems by Theo LeGro

DEAR JOHN: THE END

What radical choreography will keep me
moving now, knowing what I know?

Stars burn holes in the sky while my toes
turn blue in the bathwater to songs 

I don't even like. I should have more
important things to worry about

than whether you’ll see me walking 
into golden hour out of the cancer center, 

bandage on my arm as red as my dress. 
Like if this is going to kill me. Like if 

that matters. But all I can think about 
is how I want you to hold me so tight 

my breath grows branches. How I want 
to be with you by the river 

one more time. Maybe then 
I’d finally be ready to let go.

 

DEAR JOHN

You’re gone. I know,
but I’m sick and I want you 
to care. My hair is all gone. 
You’re gone. I know I’m always 
late. I know I’m not meant 
to find you, that what we had
was once and only once,
but I’m scared I will die
remembering us 
laughing, lost in a dark 
darker than dark, the road
unfurling before us 
like a slick tongue.
I wasn’t ready to go home. 
Was there ever a way 
to love you? The longer
it’s been, the tighter my memory
grips what it can. How you opened
all my beer cans. Your hand
gentle at my throat, my legs
falling open in the lampless
night. The gleaming geese
dappling the water’s broad chest. 
Every song you ever sent me. 
Would it be love, if you
were the last thing I ever
remembered? Would it
matter? Another dream
of us at the river spits me 
into morning while you 
watch the moon wane 
and don’t think of me.

 

DEAR JOHN: WAITING

I let two years pass and watch for you. Things 
happen. New apartments, amputations. 
Bamboo grows wild in the backyard. My body 
demands I love it. I fail and fail. You write 
about mountains cradled in muscular clouds.
You don’t come back. You were my favorite 
hypothetical. You were the dogwood spraying 
blossoms into the wind. You were the oyster. 
Two years trapped in the gleaming nacre
of your absence. How perfect, your goneness –
smooth, luminous, unforgiving as a pearl.

 

About Theo LeGro

Theo LeGro is a queer Vietnamese-American poet and Kundiman fellow whose work has earned two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Their poetry appears or will appear in Brooklyn Poets, diode, Frontier, Plume, Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. They live in Brooklyn with a cat named Vinny.

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