Letter to Theo

By Sam Ross

Two fighters

sparring under

the park’s biggest hawthorn.

The brow of the smaller split,

red swathe growing wider.

Their violence is

a simulation. And it isn’t.

A Rottweiler

leashed to the tree watches

footwork as if trying

to discern practice

from the real thing,

as if wondering whether

to show allegiance,

pull back the dark curtain

of her lips, join the attack.

But it is evening,

training is over

and when she is untied

she softens, the pink band

of her tongue moving over

the expression of a man

embarrassed of being hurt,

insisting he isn’t, not really.

I think of it later

reading Vincent’s letters

to his brother, his description

of the asylum in San Remy:

walls papered grey-green,

chestnut tapestry slung over

the chair’s worn arm,

a field’s gold ripples

far outside the cell and finally

curtains framing

a barred window:

virescent, flimsy, marked

in a pattern

of faint red roses.