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 reaches for me. Her fingers hover as if she wants to wash me, to scrub away the stain of her daughter's last moments. But she can’t. To wash me would mean washing away the last physical piece of her, the final link to a life that is now just a memory. So she puts her hand down, and I stay here, a silent watcher on the counter.

Her father sometimes looks at me from across the room, his eyes filled with grief too heavy to express. He sees not a cup, but a story—a story of a daughter who was here one moment and gone the next, a story of a life that left a gap in their world. He sees me and feels all the things they didn’t say, the conversations they skipped, the love they didn’t share fully.

I am a cup, but I am also a tomb. I hold the weight of her last moments, the memory of her last breath. I stand as a testament to a family's grief, a constant reminder of a love that can never fade. And so, I will remain here, the cup that was never washed, a vessel for a story that has no end.