tea bag

The tea bag bobbed up and down in the chestnut-colored water, which was now tepid.

Back at home the stars are fading, and you’re nowhere. You’re nowhere.

With her thumb and index finger, she pulled at one corner of the soggy translucent paper pouch. She pulled it up out of the water and watched the tea drip down from the corner opposite the one she held, in a rivulet that after an instant turned into isolated drops that fell back into the sea of tea below.

I don’t know how we got so far away. I guess we drove for twenty days.

She took a sip of the cooling liquid, chamomile with honey and vanilla, tasting it first through her nose, and then on her lips, and then on her tongue and down her throat. She double clicked on another track and let Visions of Johanna wash over her arms and legs and down her spine.

We all sit here stranded, though we’re all doing our best to deny it. And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it.

She takes another sip of tea, hearing harmonica and percussion. Another sip of tea, this time with a slurp.

He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously…

Head down, on her knee, smelling cigarette smoke and masala incense, eyes closing, ears receiving twanging guitar and percussion. A dull pain emerges at the base of her neck and creeps out, behind her ears and up to her temples. She allows it to persist.

Little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously.

She pushes aside her curtain to let the light in and realizes that it’s already night time.

Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while.

She leaves the window exposed so that the light will come in in the morning, and climbs into bed.

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