Down to a Tea
/Tristan Marajh, Issue 07
Previously published in Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine
To my exes and estranged,
yet to budge from a grudge—
to those who are absent
to those who resent,
to those who are distant with distaste:
I would like to invite you to tea
forty years from now
when we are old,
wrinkled and wringed out by the world
by those things that separated us—
money, lust, power,
status, ambition, trauma.
Let us sit down to tea
and put it all behind us
because forty years later,
it is all behind us.
Simply:
sit, sip, start again
from when our moments were simple and sweet,
like the people we chose to become.
~
Author’s Note:
Down to a Tea, when initially conceptualized, was expected to be a nonfiction piece, with earnest explorations of things humans compulsively chase throughout their lifetimes, unconsciously destroying relationships in the process. My aim for the piece was for the sweet, ultimate reconciliation of all individuals involved.
As I wouldn’t have chosen to closely fraternize with anyone who prioritized the vices mentioned in Down to a Tea, the poem isn’t about me. But it is about many other people and many other broken relationships. And usually, in the midst of those relationships, there were humble yet transcendent moments where the persons involved simply enjoyed each other; they laughed, shared and were nourished by the other’s compassion and empathy through pleasant company and conversations. The ending of Down to a Tea aims to recapture those moments, in purer aura: that of sweet, humble, cleansed old(er) age; an interaction almost holy, perhaps in the light of a loving sun.
Tristan Marajh is currently at work on two collections of short fiction.
