THE CUP THAT WAS NEVER WASHED
I am a simple ceramic mug, cracked and chipped at the rim, but I hold more than just a memory; I hold an absence. I sit on the kitchen counter, right where she left me. My inner surface is marked with tea stains and forgotten sugar. I am the cup that was never washed. They try to ignore me. They talk around me, silently avoiding a painful truth. They pretend I am just another piece of clutter, an object that will eventually end up in the sink. But I am not clutter. I am a reminder of a life that ended too soon, a vessel carrying the last remnants of a person they lost. I remember her hand, warm and familiar, wrapping around my handle. I recall how she would stir her tea, the spoon clinking against my sides. She would sit at this counter for hours, staring out the window with her mind far away. I remember the last time she drank from me; her lips left a faint mark. The tea was cold by then. She left me here, and she never came back. Her mother, with a shaking hand, sometimes reach...
