Cup Of Tea?

How you make a cup of tea says so much about whether you care. The Japanese have it right about this. It must be precise, a reflection of your regard for the person you're serving. It must matter. I’ve always liked my tea to come in sturdy mugs and resemble tar – as dark as you can go without having it black. You serve me cups of white blandness every single morning. It has got to the point I don’t even complain. I just get up and tip it straight down the horrifically pink basin in the bedroom. All that nauseating milk and another prime teabag wasted.

Whole cultures are based around it. It does matter.

Why can’t you accept that I don’t share your insipid tastes? I like the grit of the tannin on my tongue. I don’t want a whisper of a drink when I can have a roar. I don't want to be white haunted by my tea when it could be mahogany reality.

Why do you never learn or listen? I like to think I make your afternoon tea exactly as you prefer it. I dose it with seven dollops of the white stuff. I let the teabag sit just briefly like those moments after I've got in to a hot bath. Just as its muscles start to relax I scoop it clear. I dump it from your bone china cup into my preferred earthenware mug. Sometimes it shares enough milk for me not to have to add any. I have the whole thing sorted.

But you never get it. You harry my teabag out of its doze before it does much more than stain the liquid. You drown it in milk and present it to me with a smile as if you’ve definitely got it right this time. But you haven’t. Is there any point in telling you again? How many times have I had to over the years? At least one cup a day for thirty years. Eleven thousand teabags you’ve made me throw away.

Is it a game for you? Do you like to annoy me daily? How can you not realise there’s an issue here. Your silly bovine face beaming as you remind me you don’t care enough for me. You don’t want to please although you pretend you do. What you’re really doing here is giving me a small slap as a wake-up call every morning.

Devoted everybody says. Devoted to tormenting me and stopping me from being with someone who might just care enough to occasionally get it right. Even your body is like too much milk nowadays. It used to be the creamy burrows I could forgive you for. It was what lured me back time and again below your painfully arched eyebrow. Now it’s a white mountain, thighs slapping like milk hitting the tea’s surface. It seems the brows were drawn on in the shade I'd like my tea. Too much, too much, too much. Who could blame me?

How still you lay afterwards, a pale desert. It was like strangling a marshmallow, your white throat puffing up around my fingers. Your fat clutching at my fingers in an echo of your hands on mine. I didn’t mean to snuff you out. I just couldn’t take any more. I had to make you understand how important it was to me but you kept on blankly smiling. Until the smile became a grimace. Your lips will never cover your too large cream teeth again.

I don’t know how I got you in the car. The dog was beside himself with excitement about a night walk. Way out in the forest he was so happy I felt bad. I made myself walk twenty minutes off the path, deep in the thick dark. They’ll find you one day of course but I might be ready for it then. The hardest part was leaving the dog with you. I wonder how many hours he’ll obey my command to stay. I wonder how long he’ll whine. He's a good, little dog. I feel bad because it’s not his fault. At least it’s summer and he won’t get too cold.

I have treats for him when some kind soul brings him home. I’ll make it up to him. I'll make it worth it for both him as well as me. This is the first time my morning cup of tea has been made right since we got married.