The letters I won't write
murmur most inaudibly
through the signs
of something like this
sometimes find the cracks
to transmit their noise. I've
no intention to write
to my father (about it all) but
it's a parallel epistle
fear and disappointment
inscribed in between
lines of a poem, say, or lines
spoken by a novel's hero
who (of course) has nothing
to do with a father. Cunning
and assiduous as I am
I can't always trap
the unknowable facts
in a cage constructed
of calculated artifice. Sooner
or later, hellish growls
of past hurts vibrate
the basis of an elaborate
indirect simulation. Not
formal constrictors - 'Dear...'
to 'Yours...' - but the gist
of an absolute, undocumented
list of accusations
that only insinuates
and never truly represents
the letters I can't write.