Forgive

I’m trying, of course, to forgive.
Not just for you, perhaps,
but also because I can’t concentrate
with my throat in your hands.

How do I love someone like you?
How can I call, with pure clarity,
the name of “dad” to you?
The terror’s there, but no pity.

I know I might destroy you with
not fists but unkind words.
With well-placed and effective truth
spun out in dark and artful ways.

That I could call you the destroyer and
so crush what might have been a grace,
a mercy in retirement, an end.
But I’m trying, of course, to forgive.