baby i love you but reading is not a group activity

OH, GOOD
ANOTHER DIRGE

wonderful news, Tess
this gentleman is here to describe our own globe to us

hi thank you so much for the help
and the arm that’s touching me right now
but I was actually reading okay by myself before you got here

i just
christ
i need a minute to look at something that isn’t your mustache
just a single minute

he’s behind me right now
isn’t he
he’s going to start reading to me again
i can feel it 

no, darling, it’s wonderful
just wonderful
i was just wondering if you could back up another four and a half paces before you begin the next scroll

I’m smiling, so we can’t be fighting

I shall faint, I shall faint, I cannot bear it
you shall bear it
I have listened to his poetry since I was a girl
you have a strength within you that you do not even know yet

oh I do love this game 
where I keep pushing you away 
but you keep touching me 
I love it so much that I think we should let Eliza have a turn 
of where she’s pushing you away but for jokes

mm yes
I quite garden
I mean I quite agree

better the drop than this talk

hahahahahaha, oh James
dear heart, your elbow is actually pressing a bit hard into my chest
is it?
how awful
elbows are like that sometimes
perhaps if you stepped further away from touching me
it wouldn’t hurt quite so badly

eye contact, darling
eye contact, and smile, and back away so slowly he doesn’t realize we’re moving

darling Isabelle
don’t make any sudden moves
but I believe if I lean back a bit I can reach his lute
and club him with it before he reads us another sonnet