The title says the poem will never be written, yet the whole poem is that very thing. Each stanza begins "About" and sketches a piece of a life: a frightening childhood, cruel or careless teachers, awkward clothes, a pregnancy that ends in abandonment, a runaway marriage, and a long old age in the rainforest. The details swing between the painful and the absurd, like giving birth on a ferris wheel or eating burnt marshmallows in a castle, so the speaker seems to hold the past at arm's length with dark humor.
That distance is what makes the ending land. After losing five daughters, a failing marriage, and a burning forest, the speaker says only the deaths of dogs can make her cry. Earlier she learned to stop crying, and the poem suggests that lesson stuck. The mood is wry, numb, and quietly sad, with grief buried beneath the jokes.