Maybe I’m just
being a bad
sport but there’s
a certain alienation,
having married into
a foreign culture,
when all the guests are
speaking their native
tongue and I am left
there trying to look delighted;
finding ways to keep myself
busy without appearing
disinterested or behaving like
a stick-in-the-mud.
Almost inevitably,
I’m quite cross by
the end of the night;
my mood, befouled;
angry at myself
for being so selfish.
Gary Edward Geraci