“I hate your dad,” my lover said to me
while pacing back and forth across our room,
her body tense with vehemence, her face
forsaking beauty for outrageous rage.
“He damaged you – conditioned you to be
a wordless friend and father, bound to doom
your son to silence and your wife to place
her trust in others.” And I can’t assuage
her fury, though she never knew my dad
and hates one parent of each friend she’s had.
For she invokes some truth of me, while judging
on my history, and ever smudging
others’ folks as well. She speaks some truth,
but needs to look beneath her father’s roof.