Rob S. Friedman
November 2021
RIP, Dad
It’s as if, like Goneril, I’d spent my life waiting him out, the tense-lipped eldest daughter.
Cold even in the small room down the hall from where he laid, tubed and monitored, my siblings silently accepting their grief having as many sources as my vengeance has motives.
Years have passed yet “Ingratitude, that marble-hearted fiend” defines me still, dismissing “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child.”
I did not intend to “Dismantle so many folds of favor.” Better to sew them together, wear them ostentatiously, my emblem of how “Pride is not plainness.”
Rob S. Friedman 