Taking tea, in summer, wind sweeping
The sun room’s glass,
As summer storms, trickle across the windows.
From cake to cake as rain fills the balmy air
Tempestuous sighs to March grey skies.

Ah the questions you ask,
Soft in voice and tender tone
While the answers I gave are cut with hoarse voice
And harsh thoughts-

Of movies old and new the silver screen
And sepia tone images,
French women, well past their splendour
Restless and translucent, picturing her voice echo

Words, “I just wish I were a lot older or a lot younger.”

“Je souhaite simplement j'étais beaucoup plus âgé ou beaucoup plus jeune.”

My eyes, fixed on the floor,
As we take our tea, those cakes,
Rich, indulgent and so much like our devotion

Transitory, perhaps too affluent,
Perhaps too much.
Yet with heavy heart, I come to sit with you

In your age so much more than
Just a girl, and so far from being a woman-

When we take tea, in the winter months
The ironic rays of jealous sun,
Cold across our faces, and warm upon the morning snow

The warm voices fill us to the brim
Light chatter of frivolous things, and smoke
Nursery rhymes and gentle songs

Stories, fairytales ah
Your youth when you’re so much older
So much older than I wish you to be

And myself so much younger than you need
It comes to time and the gaps between you and I

Yet, “Happiness is beneficial for the body,
But it is grief that develops the powers of the mind”

Pourtant, “le bonheur est bénéfique pour le corps,
mais c'est le chagrin qui développe les compétences de l'esprit.”

The petulant look, captured in your
In your crazed eyes that stare me out,
Hold me frighten me, send shivers through

Through the spine of skeletons hanging on your walls!

The morbid decorations,
Reminders of mortality, you told me
“Those old bones, yes those old bones,
Belongings to someone I once knew,”

The strangeness of this forced me to choke
Ahh how I choked on the cold tea,
In my warm throat-

How we moved from fairytales,
Romance and nursery rhymes
To, skeletons and mortality.
Just like you to jump

One

Extreme

Straight to the other, at times you’re lost
Yet we take tea together everyday
And everyday you’re someone else
A different figure in the smoky room
Eyes smiling or eyes crying,
A soft voice tender tone or-

Harsh words from chapped lips,
And every time the same song,
The same song hangs in the air
Gentle delicate then harsh.