Sonnet: An Unlaced Life

My name with foul insinuation's tarred

By people who seek easy victims meek

To charge with crimes in public. Life is marred

And razed for me. Now, everywhere I seek,

.

I picture enemies in friends I knew

Before this whole fiasco. Do they now

Believe those spurious charges? Friend, do YOU?

Would you respond with hugs, would you allow

.

Your former friend our old ties to re-lace?

Or am I out of office, our bond broken?

I'm, through no fault of mine, without a face;

I prosper not. What of the words we'd spoken?

.

You, reader, are but one of those I've lost.

The predators themselves knew not the cost.