potential artful tangent (unused)

High Tea

Oh, but we thought we were so artful,
sophomores with our skirts spread
in waves upon the floor, perfect circles,
feet tucked up neatly underneath, backs

so straight that we might as well
have been wearing corsets, hands
in our laps, four o'clock exactly every day,
a tradition non-negotiable, us other three
playing at being the ladies

that none of us but Emma were. She
would serve the tea in shallow cups,
pour it from the pot just

so, set out the biscuits. We knew our place
and never moved. In a way I think we loved her
for being so precise, for understanding
the need for structure in a life. Then like royalty

she’d sink down with us, smoothing
her skirt, and sip her tea, and look at us,
and raise her eyebrows, waiting. I remember
the heat of those thin cups, the way
they almost burned your lips as
you sipped tea to dodge that steady gaze,

recall the silence as we others sought
for things to say. I can still feel
my girlfriend’s knee pressed into mine,
hear the careless way of talking that she had
which calmed us all and brought us in
until by the time the tea
was gone the four of us had
our elbows propped up on the table
skirts hiked, sprawling like the college kids
we really were. And yet

when Emma rose we all rose too, like ladies
in waiting to their Queen, four-thirty,
every day.