Tea

by Sheniz Janmohamed

Each morning,

I gaze into my mug of tea
and imagine what might’ve been
and what might be

I sit at the table
and laugh at my own resistance to
love what is in front of me
to raise this cup to my lips
and simply drink tea gone cold

But I am committed to
a familiar, comforting bitterness
a lullaby in a voice that used to be mine.

With the axe of my own making,
I crack the hollow shell of a dream
woken up from long ago.

I take the last sip of
whys and whens

until all that remains
is tea.
 
 
And then,
I start again
and again and
again and
again

— from Juniper Volume 4, Issue 2