Pushed away: Tea (Black)

It keeps people at the distance of commentary, conducting relationships as reports about others rather than exchanges with them, and the talk runs steadily toward the diminishing, with women taking the sharper end of it. A mother who undercut consistently made direct closeness the place where damage happened, so discussing people became the safe version of knowing them. What it asks for is to say one of the observations to the person it concerns, in the ordinary way.

I know everything about them. I've never actually said any of it to their face.

It echoes Bricriu of the poisoned tongue, who built a hall with a private room for himself, set the whole feast at odds with a few well-placed sentences, and watched the fighting from above. The form implies a task: to come down and eat at the table being talked about.