Friday, July 4, 2025

A mad tea party Oct. 23, 2012

  

It is a mad tea party from which I am excluded, too public in too public a space to live up to my most dreaded imagination, co-workers c—mingling in a farewell moment I am not welcome to share, when at night, in the dark, in a more private place such a party might have more tender significance, a last moment with this man or that woman before she turns into a butterfly and flees. I can only imagine her expression like a ten-year-old hovering over a birthday cake full of candles and being asked to blow them all out, denying herself even the smallest piece when she clearly believes she deserves it, this last party, this parting of ways from which there will be no return, in public or maybe even in private, will she let the master of our little plantation continue to visit her after hours, where they can continue all they had here.

But what’s to be gained when there are no more ladders to climb, not room at the top?

They held this farewell party for her, most knowing they might never see her again, as I know I most likely never will, a mad tea party where everybody switches seats every time someone pours a new cup of tea for us to drink.

 


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