I wanted one cup of tea that belonged only to me

Dear Delyara, No reheating it. No forgetting it. No setting it down to answer a question. No child taking a sip because theirs is “too hot.” No husband asking where the scissors are just as I sit down. No school message vibrating through the table and pulling my attention out of the room. Just one ordinary cup of tea, made and finished in one continuous line. That was all I wanted this afternoon. Instead, it became another one of those stop-start domestic scenes where the tea was present but I was only arriving to it in fragments. By the time I finally drank the last of it, it tasted like the end of everybody else’s needs, not the beginning of my own rest. It’s such a small thing. Still, it felt like the right symbol for the day.