I don’t know how to address this.
“Dear Dad...” is certainly not right.
You and I have never met, after all.
There’s another man I call “Dad.”
I love him dearly, of course, and
Could not ask for a better father.
But still... I wonder about you.
I know your name is Les,
But not if it’s Lester or Leslie.
Your surname is Brooker,
But that may not be its spelling.
I’m guessing you’re in your fifties.
Mother would have been.
You probably haven’t heard, of course...
Mother passed away a few years back.
Shortly before my wedding.
Oh, yes... You have a daughter-in-law.
No grandkids, though...
That’s not on our agenda.
Mother only spoke of you once.
I was thirteen at the time.
Yet that conversation stays with me.
So I know that I was conceived
In a night of drunken teen lust,
And that you offered to pay for an abortion.
And she told me it was then that
She said she never wanted to see you again.
I don’t hold any of that against you.
Really, I don’t.
I don’t even hold against you
The fact that you didn’t want me.
Or rather, the fact that
You didn’t want to be a father.
I’m older now than you were then,
And I don’t want to be one, either.
I wonder, though, if you had wanted a child,
What sort of father would you have been?
I wonder what kind of man you are,
And what parts of me are reflections of you.
I wonder if we’d like each other.
And naturally, I wonder about mundane things...
What you look like, where you live,
Even whether you’re still alive.
I wonder if you ever wonder about me.
Mostly, though, I wonder if
I’ll ever know the answers to these questions.
So, Father... if you’re out there...
Know that I do think of you, but
Am unsure how to find you.
Or even if I want to.
Believe me, it’s nothing personal,
But then... nothing between us is.