Sideways Sabotage
ode to my sister-in-law
Ever get a compliment that’s all surface,
hiding an insult disguised on purpose?
Ever get the sensation of being conned and played
like some cheap tavern game, every weakness displayed?
Have you ever received a pseudoapology?
You know, a reframing of events, beginning with secondly,
indicting your reaction
obscuring the infraction.
Is it not plain to see?
The problem is you, never me.
You’re too dumb to comprehend:
my kindness serves me to the end;
understand your assertion of humanity’s a baseless demand.
If you assert that you matter
the way I do, I dismiss your chatter.
Get in line, forget the attack,
and don’t you dare fire back.
About the Creator
Harper Lewis
I'm a weirdo nerd who’s extremely subversive. I like rocks, incense, and witchy stuff. Intrusive rhyme bothers me. Some of my fiction might have provoked divorce proceedings in another state.😈
MA English literature, College of Charleston
Keep reading
More stories from Harper Lewis and writers in Poets and other communities.
Comments (5)
That line about a “compliment that’s all surface, hiding an insult disguised on purpose” immediately made me think of those weird moments where you walk away from a conversation feeling small but can’t quite explain why. The part with the pseudo-apology starting with “secondly” felt painfully real too—it’s that shift where suddenly your reaction becomes the problem instead of what actually happened. Reading this felt like someone finally putting words to that sideways kind of manipulation people pretend is kindness. I’m curious though—did writing this feel more like releasing something you’d been holding in, or more like trying to make sense of the situation after the fact?
Damn. She seems like a nice person lol. You let this all out and it was beautiful.
On fire lately! Your poetic revenge forever reminds me of that epic scene in A Knight’s Tale when the character Chaucer tells the Pardoner and the Summoner: “ I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.” One of my absolute favorite sequences in that movie because IYKYK. A maxim to live by all would do well to remember: Never fuck with a goddess or a writer. . . .
I totally relate to this. Kindness is often mistaken as stupid. I am not stupid. Great poem with lots of grit!
I have been there many times, vicious use of rhyme. Excellent