[POEM] A Modified Sonnet for My Babushka

No one but your superiors know who you are or what you are truly capable of, but today, you are a sleeping asset working as a janitor for an office building in the middle of Manhattan. Your curled hair, two inch high heels and shiny, plastic, sunglasses goes well with what earns your keep, enough to feed and house you in your safe-house disguised as an apartment. You have an accent, something eastern European, and I can hear you sometimes talking to yourself as you go about your work or when you make small talk with passers-by. When I say hello, you always greet me warmly, which plays nicely into your cover story. You tell everyone that you worked on a cruise ship before coming here as a way to explain your commitment to customer service, and there is some clever suggestion of tired contempt for the fat and wealthy who carelessly exploit underpaid workers of the industry. But let's not go too far down that rabbit hole, because we both know that you are a veteran of the service.

You've come quite far in life, so much so that there are rumors of your prolific work, but not as far as you had hoped despite working thousands of miles from home. All you wanted to do was to get out of the grimy shithole your family had lived in for generations, just to feed your son. By the way, he's gone on now to do you proud as an interpreter, and you hope that he knows that you think about him every day, that you wonder if he thinks about you as often. And how did you get here, from some cold town in Russia to an office building halfway around the world? Is it any better here than when you were poisoning the drinks of crime lords and seducing secret agents, or maybe even finding a firestar love destined only for the duration of the mission? Or has nothing changed from your cramped cabin where your bunk-mate desperately had sex as you were writing letters of dim light and remembrance to your son?

Forgive me – I did not mean to impose narrative where it was not meant to be shared. All that I have said is purely conjecture, a warped reflection from what you have told me in the molded smile and chain-smoked cigarettes as you took those hidden breaks outside in the December wind.