Confrontation with a colleague
Everything you said, I knew you would say.
Every trick you tried was met
by what I knew had to be said
against each devious ploy.
A friendship lost to leave this veneer
of goodwill. This I preserve
and survive without feeling clever,
or smug, only heavy.
The burden of my nature and yours
was shaped in the brains of our ancestors-
my forbears, yours, and yours mine,
the generations stacked beneath like clay:
the landscape of the present day,
where all understand the hand to the ledge,
the paranoia when it's not what it seems.
Virtue I cannot claim, but think myself straight, mainly,
yet quickly judged how you would act
as if it were my own thought,
how your gambit would unfold to box me off.
The guardian devil in my DNA gives me a kick in the guts,
urges manoeuvre when you reappear.
These thoughts fall like heaviness itself,
until I'm too weary, even to rise from my chair.
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