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Natalie G’Schwind

Bitter Tea

Natalie G’Schwind
​Sticky red McDonald booths, posh white loves seats.
Our culture, made for pairs and groups,
 
Buy one fizzy pop, brown bubbles raising up,
Get another half off.
 
“How many for your table?”
Waitress flashes sympathetic glances
At my quiet “Just one, please.”
Pity exposed in the depths of caramel eyes,
So pretty,
Like sap found on a golden leafed tree.
Her husband must remind her of this beauty
every morning.
 
Coffee shops are made for two,
 I go journal in hand
Writing about places made
For no one, where
Wild animals hardly give glances.
Wilderness of prairie grasses, outlaw cattle,
Snorty horses, starved
Lone wolves.
Where solitude is
Welcomed.
Movies are meant for two,
If you can make it
To the seats, no one can tell in the screen’s blue glow
Only a shadow sits beside
You.
 
Houses meant for families -those present, those hoped.
But my family is over a hundred miles,
Two left turns away.
Darkness of my
Living room, the handy down chair
With a rip,
Seems to enclose me
With the fact that no one
Knows where I am, what I am doing.
Key’s rattle and chime and
echo
Hitting the glowing white tile. I follow, slower
 like a sinking ship,
Mimicking the rattle and chime and echo.
Jacket still on, winter air still clinging.
 
Loneliness does not
Subside just because another occupies the house.
If the room wasn’t hiding the tears
Streaking my checks,
With charcoal mascara like a punk singer trapped in
The ‘70s,
If it was light and someone asked how
The movie was,
Teapot screaming to be poured,
They gave me tea, two scopes of sugar,
Not a tablespoon
Of golden honey, I would only have to hide the
Loneliness.
Instead, I choose the dark living room, only a musky
Easy chair hearing
Sobs of an empty house, over faking the
Love of grainy sugar.
Always floating to
The bottom leaving the tea bitter, the last drink painfully
Sweet.
Loneliness is better spent
Alone.
 
The key’s rattle echoes off
White walls, scuff marks hidden in
 
Fold after fold of darkness.
The darkness doesn’t ask what is wrong. 
From the Author on this Piece- This poem explores how our culture tends to resolve around groups and couples. How many places are meant for just one person? How many times do we look at someone eating at a restaurant alone with pity? At some point we have all felt alone. Sometimes we feel most alone when we have to pretend to be someone else around another person. This poem looks at different forms of being alone from physically coming home to an empty house to the loneliness felt when someone is homesick.
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