Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody, Who are you?

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

So many ways to read this, unlike much poetry. Knowing Dickinson's history only adds layers to what appears to be a simple question.

I found the phrasing haunting, having heard the first couplet on SVU a couple of years back and finally googled  to see if Dick Wolf  had such a brilliant mind or borrowed it from somewhere.

 Dick Wolf is brilliant and to have borrowed this couplet to use in a case about pedophilia left me breathless.

Storyline: Two children, now young adults. The girl has escaped, the boy who was trained to rape her as a child, also now an adult has continued to perpetuate molestations on young children. She confronts him as he's just been arrested and interrogated by Benson/Stabler. His former companion begs him to speak about their experiences, help put away the man that kidnapped them, filmed them, abused them and wrote a book explaining how to do it. 

The young man looks up at her, finally realizing who she is...he is so lost in a cycle of abuse/abusing she is only another faceless entity for him until she triggers a memory of their protecting one another as very young children. Almost with resignation, he blankly then stares through her and quietly tells her...

....I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?