She got her lawyer after me.
Smith Mahoney Weiss and more.
Creatures of the Thirty-ninth floor.Gray-haired Mr. Bogan had a bonding strategy
He employed, saying how he judged us
To be about the same in years.I told him what initially she said to me—
“My father’s not the man he seems to be”—
Only to discover some years later what she meant.His visits in the dark to her childhood room,
The nightmare appropriation of her space.
How, recalling these things, she would wake me from sleep.“I’m going to die” is what she said.
The tremble in her voice and frame.
Incested. Anorexic. A foreign tongue I had to learn.Me a proxy for her father as her anger broke.
“You’re sucking my blood,
My lord and master,” was her refrain.I could not leave without my saying.
This Mr. Bogan not so silk suit steady
Upon the footing of his own mind.Some instability showing in the bleakness
Of his midlife face. The sublet downtown
Replacing the suburban commute,And with it a tale of his own to tell,
Of a love he’d lost to match my own,
As I signed on lines his X’s led me to.The light intense on the avenue where soon
I walked the thirty blocks back to work,
Thoughts of self-betrayal not welcome in my mind.August 2003