I am sorry
I did not
drink the cup
you made for me
once I smelled
wafts of cinnamon
marching towards me,
the mood of consumption
by which I mean the want of tea—
a fickle game,
easily lost—
fizzled quickly out;
if I’m being
perfectly honest
I pictured myself
on the edge
of your cup
tiny, microscopic,
a porcelain Andes
my feet teetering
or slipping,
trudging across
the smooth white border—
steam to my left
world at my right.
in a way
it was volcanic,
in another, horrifying
the treachery of
a cup of tea;
imagine I missed
the cinnamon buoy
and was left
to tread on
alone.
I did not
know how to share
this with you.
instead, I just
let the tea cool.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mady Thetard is a writer and theatre-maker pursuing a theatre arts major at Point Park University, where she writes a lot of plays and directs a lot of student work. Mady often finds herself contemplating queer ecology and our gravitation towards posthumanism. Her work is published or upcoming in The Midwest Quarterly, The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain: Pittsburgh Poems, and PennWest University's The Magazine.

Contents

ode to your cup of tea placed warm in my hands

ABOUT THE AUTHOR