A/N: Inspired by the Swan Queen Skype Chat (AKA: So THAT'S who Lisa is). I have way too fun talking with all the wonderful and hilarious new friends who participate. This is a little present for them!
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"Granny, cut off the expresso machine! We can't hear Mary Margaret's poem," Ruby slammed her hands down on the table and yelled over her shoulder towards the kitchen.
Granny stopped steaming milk for a moment and popped out from behind the counter. "If you want hot drinks for your high falutin' poetry whoop-de-doo then I have to use the steamer! I didn't spend all this money on a fancy expresso machine to not sell drinks."
"I'm just saying it's really loud and it's disrespectful to our readers," Ruby crossed her arms and slunk down in her seat, shaking her head.
The sound of whooshing steam commenced again. Somehow it was even louder. Granny hollered over it, "Ask Regina, it's her latte on the line. I can do it iced, but it's not as good."
Regina looked around and blew out a little breath of annoyance. "Yes, I want my latte. If we're all going to sit through this I need caffeine."
It was another typical Friday night in Storybrooke, with one exception: Emma had gotten really into this whole poetry scene since becoming the Dark One. Everyone in town had to suffer through her inexplicable mood swings and now, unfortunately her insufferable writing workshops.
"Look, I agreed to let you all have your poetry night here, but only because Ruby said the diner had a certain charm that really added to the ambiance. Part of that ambiance is the expresso machine."
Everyone at the table looked around in discomfort. Hook tried to hold Emma's hand, but she shrugged him off and scooted her chair away. Looking down, she flipped through her leather bound journal. No one had expected that the Dark One would act like a teenage emo chick, but if that was the worst she was going to be everyone seemed to be tolerating her evil for the time being.
"Mom, go ahead and start. It can't take that long to steam the milk…I could do it with magic—."
"No!" Everyone yelled in unison, and the tension immediately rose in the nearly deserted diner. Emma had good intentions, but her magic didn't ever produce positive results since she married her soul to the darkness.
It was just one of those things.
"Fine," Emma pushed her newly dyed streak of jet black hair over her eyes to hide her face from the group. She licked her black painted lips, and went back to looking through her feelings journal.
"Mom, just read already."
"Okay," Mary Margaret settled into her seat and cleared her throat by bopping her chest with her fist. "I wrote this while on a walk through the woods today…it's about birds."
David tried to keep his face schooled into a mask of support, but inwardly he was groaning along with the others. Every poem she had written thus far had been about birds.
"It's called: 'The Beautiful Bluebird.'
"Everyone has a copy to make notes," Emma tapped her finger on the table until everyone grumbled and flipped through their piles of loose leaf sheets which had been Xeroxed on the library copy machine that had been outdated by 1986.
The whirring of the expresso machine droned on in the background.
"The beautiful bluebird: Prrrr-innnn-gggg, Prrr—innn-gggg. She sings her song. Her song is a happy one. 'I am happy' she sings, 'I have my nest, I have my husband and I have my sweet little baby birds.' Prrr-innn-gggg, Prrr-innn-gggg." Mary Margaret warbled out the last stanza and smiled as she placed her paper neatly on the table.
Emma tapped the table and shot everyone a look to prompt them for feedback. "Oh, that was just wonderful," Regina said with a tone of thinly veiled sarcasm. Granny delivered her latte to the table and Regina started to sip it immediately just to keep her mouth busy so she wouldn't be required to give any in-depth feedback.
"It was better than the one last week about the cardinal, but that one you wrote about the Heron really touched me," Robin offered sincerely.
"I tried," Mary Margaret perked up at the praise and smiled brightly.
"Where's Henry?" David asked, his grandson was usually the only one at poetry night he could relate to.
Regina waved her hand through the air, "He, uh, didn't want to come this week, but he sent his poem along with me to read."
She reached into her purse and unfolded the poem, rather letter addressed to 'Moms'.
"Why didn't he want to come?" Emma pouted. Everyone knew she was feeling a bit self conscious about her new status, and worried Henry didn't want to be around her recently.
Regina took in a breath and turned her focus on Emma, "If you must know, he said that your poem last week made him uncomfortable."
"What? The poem I wrote about your heart?" Emma asked in confusion. "Why didn't he like it?"
Regina's eyes darted guiltily back and forth. She spoke grudgingly, careful with her wording. "It wasn't so much the part about my heart, but how you described the um…surrounding location."
"Ah, yes, Emma, I know what he means. When you described Regina's breasts as two juicy peaches holding nestling her heart beneath…" Hook nodded in recollection.
Emma grumbled and shifted in her seat, "Poetry is subjective…I was eating a peach at the time…"
"Were you eating melons too? Because that's how you described her ass in the next paragraph; I still have a copy in my satchel if you want me to refresh your memory," Robin added with disdain.
"I don't think we need to read it again…whatever. What does Henry's poem say anyway?" Emma felt her cheeks flush and stole a glance down Regina's shirt. She really did have lovely plump peach like breasts, but she clamped her mouth shut before she could voice that particular opinion.
Regina scanned the note, and sighed, "He wants us to take him to Disneyworld. He's making a plea that it would practically be like a living history of our ancestry, and he think the Tower of Terror Two would be awesome."
Mary Margaret hummed, "Well, he did fail his family tree assignment. To be fair it was a bit complicated. He took my credit card and bought an at home DNA kit, but the results came back blank. Apparently, the fairytale genome hasn't been researched thoroughly."
"Well, that's just great…erasing even more of the kid's fragile identity," Emma said throwing up her hands. "Maybe the kid deserves a trip to Disneyworld."
"We'll discuss it," Regina patted Emma's hand and folded up Henry's note without reading anymore.
"Okay, Great, so Robin do you want to go next? I know you were working on a very personal piece," Emma directed her attention to Robin. Whenever she spoke to him her voice always seemed lower and a bit more evil.
"I'd be honored," Robin smiled at Regina and Emma narrowed her eyes in warning. He looked away nervously, "Okay, so I've been spending my days at the library because it's a free place to be indoors, and Belle showed me the section on Shakespeare."
"Just get on with it," Emma demanded as her papers crumpled under the strength of her grip. Regina moved her steadying hand onto her bicep and squeezed it lightly. The touch seemed to calm Emma down quickly. Her deathly pale cheeks seemed to color for a moment, "Sorry, I have a lot of feelings…"
"We know, darling. Your father and I are A-ok with you being the dark one, and if poetry helps you express the darkness in your soul then we are 100 percent supportive," Mary Margaret's chin crinkled as she nodded rapidly as if she was trying to convince her self that everything was indeed A-ok.
"Just read the damned thing," Granny chimed in as she wiped down the counter. "I want to start the jukebox and I can't listen to my closing jams until you people are done with your frou-frou hoopla."
"Right- without notes," Robin stood up and pushed in his chair. He raised his left hand and balled it into a fist dramatically:
"Oh, how I long to evacuate my bowels. A river of sadness and longing runs hot through my nether regions as I squat, neigh, sit on the porcelain throne of white. I strain. I push. I pinch. My arse burns with need. To empty myself of my burden would bring sweet relief. Alas, I meet with my enemy: frustration, for I cannot-shall not-find release. I clench my buttocks and raise my trousers. Fin."
Hook seemed enraptured as he rubbed his jaw and clapped his hand onto the table, "Haha! That one speaks to me. I had the same thoughts after eating entirely too much of this realm's processed cheese."
"Moving on," Emma took a breath and looked at Hook. "You ready?"
"Aye, my poem is called "Phantom Pains."
"Is it another one about your missing hand?" Regina sounded utterly annoyed. She had good reason, as most of these people were stuck on the same simple themes. Mary Margaret had her bird obsession, Robin had written a freaking sonnet about constipation and the laxative effects of Granny's bean burrito special. Hook was always going on about his damned…hook.
"Regina let the man speak," Emma moved her hand off of her thigh, where it had inexplicably wondered down from her arm. She lowered her voice and whispered in Regina's ear, "but get out your makeup remover in case he starts crying again. He looks pathetic with eyeliner running down his cheeks."
Hook was already off and running, he directed his attention across the table at Robin. Emma felt Regina's put her warm hand back on her thigh and stroke up and down her black rubber pants.
"I am a lampshade/containing my light/extinguishing the flame/but bargains had to be made. For my one true love/ she is no longer my little blonde dove/ I have no hand/ and I feel oh so bland/ I fear I have lost her to another/just like my hand/ but I can't replace my girlfriend with a metal hook…or a lampshade…" He trailed off and stared towards the window; he stroked his reddened makeup stained face and started to weep openly.
"That it?" Emma asked crassly. Without looking at him Regina passed Emma makeup removing cloth. She handed it over to Hook and he rubbed it over his messy face and then sanctimoniously blew his nose.
"So my poem is a little bit lighter than that one…it's not about nipples or peaches either," Ruby looked proud, and not mind-numbingly bored for the first time all evening. "It's about my desire to go somewhere else…like I really want to just get out of here and be free, you know?"
"Is that the poem or just the introduction?" David asked in confusion. He was trying to follow along, but he was really just there because of his wife's desire to support Emma in her transition.
Ruby licked her lips and started to read, "Life is like a stack of pancakes from the International House of Pancakes…" she paused grimacing at her wording. "Tall, buttery, slathered in syrup…I want those pancakes. After a few bites, I realize that life is empty carbs and sugar. The End."
She looked around hoping for some thought provoked faces, but everyone was either staring down at their papers or avoiding her eyes.
Mary Margaret's chin was upturned in thought. Her mind was really racing, "I kinda get it…the pancakes symbolize desire, but after you get what you want you find it doesn't have as much substance. Maybe it's the anticipation or the longing for something new and exotic that we crave."
"I don't know how new and exotic IHOP can be, but I like what you're thinking," Emma moderated the discussion. "So who wants to hear Regina's poem? I know I do."
Granny forced her way between them and started wiping down the table with a wet rag, "I have a poem, it goes like this: Hurry up, and get out of here. I need this table for my afterhours strip bridge club."
"How do you play Strip Bridge?" Ruby made a disgusted face, and a shudder ran around the group at the provoked visuals.
"Wouldn't you all like to know…I'm courting that Albert Spencer and he always makes seven with no trumps!"
Regina quickly interrupted Granny, "Maybe Emma should go…we clearly don't have time for any more poems. Perhaps we should just call it a night. " She squirmed uneasily, avoiding all the eyes turned on her at the table.
"Nonsense, read us your poem…." Emma widened her eyes in her patented puppy look that Regina found irresistible. Sure, she wore a lot more smoky black makeup around her strangely colored eyes, but that was just a side effect of infinite evil warring for her soul. Otherwise, she looked pretty damn hot all things considered.
"K," Regina's eyes softened and she got closer to Emma. "I've had a lot of time to think and well, instead of writing a poem with words, I drew a picture."
"That's not a poem," Mary Margaret pointed out snottily.
Regina huffed and shot her a look, "It's a visual representation of my interpretation of my personal feelings about sacrifice and guilt…it's dedicated to Emma."
Robin snatched Regina's "poem" out of her hands. "Bollocks! This is obscene!"
Emma reached across the table and snatched it back, her strange colored flared up brightly as if the fires of hell burnt behind them. Robin looked like he was about to shit himself. "I think it's beautiful…is that me as a bumble bee?"
"Yes!" Regina beamed you got it, but your stinger is sort of detached and laying on the ground…This is me I'm the Queen bee naturally, and you're sort of worshipping me and there's our honey comb nest…"
"Really wonderful, Regina….just beautiful…like your lush peachy breasts…."
At that, everyone knew the night was over.
When Emma started in talking about Regina's fruit like physical attributes it was just time to call it a night. Mary Margaret was the first to abruptly push away from the table. Ruby got up and tapped Hook on the shoulder, he had his head down and his body had gone limp like he'd given up all hope. Robin ran for the bathroom.
This just left Regina and Emma smiling and gazing at one another as they spoke closely and intensely about poetic metaphors. They were trying to decide which little bee would be strapping on the stinger that evening.
Another successful and enriching poetry writing workshop concluded.