The tasting begins,
A scotch ale,
The grown-up lemonade;
Sweet amber lager and hops bite.
A blonde and a brunette in conversation,
the French-Canadian twang in Nelson's central hub,
a cackle of laughter behind the wall where tables and guests converse.
A cackle loud
and cracking wonders,
if this is my aunt - her piercing laugh
Splits eardrums in half,
But all is meaning well in her heart, and like my mother's emotional love
I appreciate.

Should I be drinking with these drugs in me? It is light medication, but one does need to be careful. I remember once before my life going down the toilet because of
a whiskey binge,
up in Auck-l'nd,
but the meds were much stronger then. Much stronger.
How the swirl of the toilet bowl pulled my life down with it. There it went. There it went.
Pizza is here, and it smells good - it smells beautiful. Beautiful!

If the discussion was particles,
   Would we click like magnetic links?
   Would we draw each other's energies
        Together in explosive sync?
   Would we collide and dismantle
        The rules of engagement?

What is our connection,
Our discoveries,
Our situation,
Our thoughts of dissolution?
Our Sunday wandering,
Drive-by landscaping,
Picking trees apart with dendrological assassinations.
Musical repetitions burning out our ears until the cymbal crashes the verse to enter vocal explanations, and our bearded friends make their hipster proclamations from around the millennial corner where we shut the door and pretend to ignore the pleading cries as though they were any different from the generations before.

A steel-string acoustic trickles down from the speakers in high corners of the cafe-restaurant, sultry hushed vocals whispering notes of longing and wonder. Chatter across the seated tables ignore the minute contemplations spent on remembering love.

Amy busies herself with the chicken burger dripping soft avocado, cranberry and Camembert across the plate, a knife and fork is employed to quarter and then dissect until bite-sized pieces will fit in her mouth.

Clouds have greyed out the often blue sky requiring a two bar heater to help keep the customers warm inside, puffy jackets and wool scarves not enough to ward off the striking cold whistling down from the Kahurangi hills. Escape swirls the cranberry sauce up with avocado, holds on with some freshly cooked soft bun, and launches the sweetness at her tongue. Escape remembers that love is broken sometimes, and musicians are there to remind; songs will invade the quiet and calm in sultry whispers, breaths that fade into chattering voices.

A bus load of school children stop at the intersection outside, last day of term, homeward bound they run. A blonde girl looks in at the customers, raises a hand and waves. Amy is not sure if it's her the girl is waving at - child eyes are peering through a layer of glass doors, see-through canvas that squares off the café’s sun area, and the bus's own dirty and unwashed window. And Amy knows there are customers behind her.

But she smiles, raises her own hand, twinkles some fingers and returns to her burger, sopping up more spilled cranberry and Camembert hoping to avoid any embarrassment if the girl on the bus had in fact been waving to someone else. But Amy is sure she caught a smile out of the corner of her eye as the girl returned to looking forward and the bus moved out of sight.

The smile imbued the cranberry and Camembert with satisfactory sweetness.