Poetry: “ON MY 34TH BIRTHDAY I STEAL ANOTHER YEAR” by Theo LeGro
ON MY 34TH BIRTHDAY I STEAL ANOTHER YEAR
A real Benadryl knockout year. A blood bag
squeezed empty. I’m becoming my mother:
sleepless, crackers for dinner, fists full of matches
because I’d burn down my only home if it means
I got there first. My oncologist is sick
of my bravado and I can’t blame her.
I wasn’t going to do this. I went out
into the sun. I made so many lists: tragedies
I will not inherit. Names I’ll never speak
again. I crossed the ocean. I walked
through ancient rooms. I got stoned
again. I looked out the window of an airplane
and saw a green so green I wept.
Nights I stayed inside and ate alone
in the dark. Is there really any difference
between planting a thing and burying it?
In the treatment room they kept asking
what song I wanted to hear. I couldn’t think
of a single one.
About Theo LeGro
Theo LeGro is a Vietnamese-American poet who has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and fellowships from Kundiman. Their work appears or will appear in Brooklyn Poets, diode, Frontier, Raleigh Review, SARKA, Variant Lit, and elsewhere. They live in Brooklyn with a cat named Vinny.
