Chicago lawyer Meghan VanLeuwen won this year's Poetry Slam with an elegant remembrance of her father's pre-digital law office. Find out more about the competition in the July Illinois Bar Journal.

Quo Ante

By Meghan VanLeuwen

When I was a young girl
we would sometimes visit my Father
at his law office
in the center of the small town where we lived.

Shag carpet, dark wood, legal tomes -
air thick and serious as Church.
We ran our fingers across file cabinets, typewriters, rolodexes.
Great stacks of briefs, like Corinthian columns, adorned every surface.

There were no computers in my Father's practice.
There were no emails either, but sometimes at night he would speak softly into a Dictaphone,
a staccato rhythm accompanying soft scratches of lead on legal pad.

There was no constant connection then.
When my Father left the office,
he was truly gone.