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.