Undeliverable Epistolary

art by Mahmoud Elmardi 

by Casper Orr

1

you don’t have to call. you don’t have to bother with formalities.

8

i’ve written letters before and there’s something beautiful about them. something cathartic in the closure of an unspoken goodbye. i won’t write you a letter. partly because i detest a cliché even more than you do and also because i know there is no such thing as closure.

9

a letter suggests finality. a beginning and an end. i can’t grant you final; a perfect finish, something with a tight bow, holding everything together. close.

12

i remember when i was fifteen-years-old, you wrote me a letter and slipped it beneath my bedroom door as if you were the postman. part of me wants to ask if it was truly that shameful to apologize. part of me already knows the answer. you never mentioned it, never asked if i forgave you. like my forgiveness was your right. like the letter was simply the prerequisite, just like i was the prerequisite busywork that came along with the coveted role of fatherhood.

13

i never read that letter. almost, but not quite. you may have thought it was enough, but it couldn’t be: the conversation didn’t hang heavy in the air, quivering like humidity just before the clouds finally crack open and the sky falls. the words held no weight. i’ve always loved letters. i almost read it just to read it, just to hold something in my hands – hands that always felt so empty. and i never tested well, but this one i passed.

14

i tucked your letter between the pages of the great gatsby. do you remember that fight we got into when i said i hated the great gatsby? do you remember how loud you got when i called f. scott fitzgerald a vulture? i don’t think the both of you are too dissimilar, feeding off of the death of culture. i don’t know what that makes me. i’m not sure i like the implication of this analogy.

28

i’ve learned to stop expecting change from someone who can’t extend that kind of kindness. kindness never mattered to you. what matters to you is being right. i know this now. i used to be foolish. now, i’m not.

29

the moral question: i am an unstoppable force. you are an unmovable object. once, the unsolved, now discovered. i’m motionless; moved on. let the philosophers know that you were right again.

3

do you even know why you do the things you do?

4

can you help it?

15

i think a lot about what was and what could have been. i think about what you could have been if you wanted to be more than what you were. you didn’t want more. and i know you blame me for the rift; the splitting of the sea that separates us. i blame you for the sea’s existence.

19

i think a lot about what safety means and i think you were wrong this time. violence isn’t always physical. you didn’t hit me much, only a few times. maybe you don’t even remember. i barely do. what i remember is everything that came after. everything that came before. everything that never came at all.

21

i don’t forgive you. i know you expect me too. i know you think it’s my job. it’s not though. my responsibility is not to you, despite what you may believe. it’s to living a life to its fullest capacity. of being better to the world than you were capable of being.

7

i can’t write you a letter, can’t write you a goodbye, because you don’t know how to let anything go. but i can write an i miss what you could have been. i can write an i miss my childhood. i can write a why did i have to grow up so fast?

i can write an i miss when i believed that change was still possible why was it not possible why could you not be better for me i was just a baby i didn’t know any better i thought that this was love i needed love i needed a father i keep looking for the best version of you in every room i enter he doesn’t exist because i didn’t know him i only knew you i find the next best thing i find you

17

who’s right and who’s wrong doesn’t matter, not really. at least, it shouldn’t. but i know you always liked to keep score. i know i was always falling behind.

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