Poem of the Week
My Only Letter To You
* hey everybody... i just found three books of poems that i'd forgotten i'd written! i'm crazy, i know. i wrote this letter in 2004 after a long relationship and turned it into a poem... never to be sent to whom i intended it to reach. *
My Only Letter To You
Dearest,
So this is where it ends.
Me spending Christmas with
your family and
you still serving me alcohol,
A Bloody Mary.
(Hold the arsenic.)
I still love you.
I think of our days in
New Orleans,
in London,
at the beach in March,
I think of how calm you are
on airplanes
and how you took spiders
outside for me.
I also think of your habits,
your incessant TV watching,
your underwear on the floor,
the toothpaste splattered mirror,
the other boys and the
things they gave you.
But this letter is not to them.
It is to you.
I will always love you.
Sometimes when I sit here
writing at Onion Creek
I can see you sitting across from me,
shoulders slumped,
eyes unfocused,
wishing you were at a gay bar.
I can still see you.
But I did your fun too!
You taught me to gamble,
you were so good!
You taught me how to have sex,
how to keep my mouth shut
(which I've once again forgotten)
and now you've taught me how to not trust.
I've become a wary schoolteacher,
a divorced trophy wife,
a sleeping dragon.
But thank you, dearest,
I can breathe now.
I can travel to California
through the screaming desert,
to frosty New York
and night dreaming Paris
and have no concern.
I will have no phone calls to make,
no "please tell me you're being good"
sentences to repeat over and over
like a worried Madonna.
You are no longer punished,
grounded, or walking
on thin ice.
You are free, darling.
I want you to take the
rest of your twenties and
live live live!
I want you to discover the most
important part of your youth,
discover who you are, and
what you want to do with your years.
Enjoy your twenties!
Mine are gone.
Dearest,
Know that I will always love you
but will
never again
have you in
my life.
Best,
Toddicus
- Wednesday, April 12, 2006 poem of the week archives