Anger? No, that would be inappropriate.
This is the twenty-first century after all;
these days, such things happen.
And when they do, nobody thinks twice,

except, in this case, me. Sadness? Yes,
but more than that. Thoughts arise unbidden:
my mind displays your key life moments,
each one a pearl in my memory.

"Pretty as a picture", "bright as a button", people say.
I have to say it too: that is how you were, for me.
You were the small and vulnerable one,
who had to be loved, no matter what.

Nausea? Indeed, that is the heart of it.
Frank Sinatra and seduction are passé, I understand.
But did it have to be squalid?
With a man like that, in the shopping mall car park?

Now I must get to know a stranger:
my daughter, the easy lay.