An Empty Chair at My Tea Party

The artificial taste of your pollutants parachutes cheekily

underneath the sweat bead

of an over-sweetened venom-leaf tucked inside

that colander-like charm.

Just so steadily it sways, and how shiny its metallic hue shivers,

like a royal tea-infuser plucked right from a Medieval breakfast table.

And just like that little, silver holder doing its duty,

slowly your toxins drip down into my dollhouse teacup

filled with an afternoon’s delight.

Then,

how mesmerizing my mania is born under the swoosh-swoosh

stirring motion

of that tiny tea-leaf pendulant

as it tick-tocks like an antique stopwatch.

Cuckoo! Achoo! It’s Noon!

A hollow timber growing as a throbbing belly ache

from under the dark cupboard space inside the pantry of Grandma’s

gathering kitchen.

It’s a bit icy behind these bare and empty walls you left me in,

and I just kind of really

want to go numb in the bite of this frigid silence here.

Can there be a tepid softness to this poisoning of me?

Wrapped up in lambskin carpet and twisted ingeniously.

Ouch. The taping of me.

Thrown about like an anchor in the deadened eye of a Turquoise Sea.