A Cup For Forgetting

The words unsaid always say more than those spoken

A Cup For Forgetting

She once held it like a child,
blue porcelain glinting
in the wet birth of morning,
steam wreathing her face
like the incense of promise.

She said it reminded her of Cornwall,
of salt-flecked hands
and the hush of gulls in flight.
She held me tight,
and I was the sea.

I bought it for her,
a nothing thing,
spun white with cobalt waves.
She clutched it like an heirloom.
Said it would be her favourite.
Doe-eyed and radiant,
I felt the weight of belief.

Now...
I find it exiled
to the third cupboard,
beside the half-dead peonies
and a jar of rubber bands.

It’s holding grease-fat spoons,
stiff with yolk.
Its lip is chipped.
Its belly, veined with cracks.
And her name, her name is scored
beneath the base,
in my childish scrawl.

She does not see me.
Not really.
She speaks in soft tundras.
I feel her sleep like snow
forming on the far bank.

When I lift the cup,
the spoons clatter,
a brief, bright scream
of metal on clay
and I know:
she has detached me.

Not packed.
Not fled.
Just folded herself inward,
like a letter never sent.