you cup your hands. hold and press them to your face. waiting for something to appear – a voice, an image suggesting what to do next – like a child hiding her face in the warmth of her own hands. a little cave or theatre of destiny.

~ ~

if you’re a black tea drinker you’ll know how hard it is to get those marks off the sides of your cup. you scrub and scrub. but you keep on using it, the stains become private history. with the evolution of the t-bag there is little loyalty to the practice of reading the leaves. you too have succumbed to the white silences of the bag.

~~

you remember those tiny clay cups used in india for train travellers at stations. a richly brewed tea handed through the window by the chai wallahs. you noticed discarded broken cups scattered along the tracks. you kept your cup for a while and then it vanished.

~~

the image of that styrofoam cup deserted on a bench at the gym. that cup with its rim coated with an imprint, a large smudge of red lipstick. week after week. regardless of a bin nearby. the female equivalent of the male leaving the toilet seat up. but can they be compared.

~~

that great mound of cups. paper, synthetic. that huge pile of rubbish, the rubble of our throats, looming over the city. choking the spaces in between cities. an ‘avalanche’ in waiting, as calvino called the discard society’s legacy. could anyone make trompe l’oeil dry stone walls from such cups. to line the edges of freeways and overpasses. look, aren’t we innovative. what magican would do it.

the listless thrill of the discard. no washing up no cleaning. a careless convenience soiling the earth.