the lonely life of a coffee mug

Have you ever wondered all the things a single coffee mug knows?

Yes, your favorite one. The pale blue porcelain with the curving handle and the chip on it’s rim. The one you used to use every morning.

It is scalded again and again with boiling water, paying no mind to the heat for it cannot feel pain. It carries with it the mournings of the old lady who held it in her withering hands as she watched them take away her husband, who died on their anniversary. It has tasted the bitter salt of sorrow when it caught three of her tears in it’s belly.

And it was left on that tired kitchen table with the red checkered cloth, hastily packed away when the old lady never returned to tenderly wash it like she did every dewy morning. It was chipped on it’s way to the thrift store, carelessly tossed onto the shelf along with the other abandoned mugs. Lost among the porcelain orphans.

Until you.

You picked it up with the familiar fondness it knew from another life it could no long recall.

In the beginning you filled it with milk and honey, washed it carefully, placed it on the kitchen shelf. The sun rose and fell and it learned the ways of the house and the individuals who dwelled inside.

Now you sit alone on the counter at two in the morning with a glass full of scotch instead of your mug.

Haven’t you ever wondered what it knows? All the secrets of the house it learned when you left it on the counter those times you were late for work. The whispered tales of your five year old sister’s midnight escapades over a serving of hot chocolate. The sins of your father while he drank whiskey from the blue in the dark of the porch. The pain of your mother as her soapy hands washed away her husband’s confessions.

And it is left on the shelf until one cold morning when your father is looking for his coffee filters, an unwary elbow knocks it to the tile floor.

The ceramic splinters sigh in relief, the floor is hurriedly swept clean, no extra thought for the mug which once watched over the house.

It held the knowledge of many lives, kept the vows of infinite secrets.

A single, jagged blue piece winks in the early sun, forgotten, under the dusty side of the fridge.