John C. Polles
Boy
For a year,
I tried
to write down everything
I wanted to say to you.
They told me to do that—
Write a letter, but
don’t send it.
It’s cathartic.
Letter after poem—
Poem after letter—
It never worked.
It wasn’t enough.
I wanted you to know
what you did.
But I
needed
to know that you cared—
Did you?
I couldn’t work out how to
make the
everything
into something—
Anything
that didn’t make me feel as
crazy
as you told me I was.
I just didn’t know how.
But, boy,
I knew you.
I knew he fucked you up—
You showed me the pictures
on your phone.
I wondered what it was like
to carry them around
in your pocket
every day.
I knew it wasn’t easy—
I knew.
I knew how you felt love—
and how you felt it fast.
Boy, I knew you.
I tried
to write down everything
I wanted to say to you.
They told me to do that—
Write a letter, but
don’t send it.
It’s cathartic.
Letter after poem—
Poem after letter—
It never worked.
It wasn’t enough.
I wanted you to know
what you did.
But I
needed
to know that you cared—
Did you?
I couldn’t work out how to
make the
everything
into something—
Anything
that didn’t make me feel as
crazy
as you told me I was.
I just didn’t know how.
But, boy,
I knew you.
I knew he fucked you up—
You showed me the pictures
on your phone.
I wondered what it was like
to carry them around
in your pocket
every day.
I knew it wasn’t easy—
I knew.
I knew how you felt love—
and how you felt it fast.
Boy, I knew you.
Biography
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John C. Polles (he/they) is a freelance editor from Northeast Ohio. He holds a B.A. in English from Kent State University at Stark, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of Canto: A Magazine for Literature & Art; John’s fiction has appeared in Luna Negra and was excerpted in Fusion Magazine. You can follow him on Instagram @johnnypanick.
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