Your eyes blink open. On the nightstand you see it. The mug you used last night. The white one wrapped in your college logo. The one you always use when you’re feeling nostalgic. Longing for times of studying for a lit exam in your dorm room, Springsteen playing softly on that thing you called a boombox. There’s a red spot on the lip of the mug. You know without looking inside that there is a red stain at the bottom too. In college, you used that mug to hold coffee, but now it’s used for that cheap bottle of Merlot. A pain flicks at your right eye so you close it, stare at the mug with only the left. The school logo has faded over the years and looking at it now, in this fresh morning light, makes you feel tired and old.
You rise out of bed, cloudy and heavy. Your slippers greet you on the wood floor below. As you stuff your feet into these cloud cocoons you stand up for a minute, wiggle your toes around like you always do. You like how the softness of the slippers cradles your feet, protects them from the cold wood floor.
“Coffee,” you say aloud as if someone might hear you. As if someone might respond.
You yawn, rub the sleep from your eyes, squint out the window. New England winter on display: bright sun, blue sky, bare trees. Snow is still there, thick and icy on the ground. You see people, “early risers” as you call them, having already done more than you’ll do all day. Look at them with their knitted hats pulled below their ears and puffy jackets zipped up to their chins. Look how they walk their little dogs with such pep in their step, as if they also need to find a quiet spot in the snow to pee.
In your small kitchen there is an oversized sink that looks like a tub. One of those tubs with the claw feet. It makes you think of something a farmer might have in a barn, even though you don’t know any farmers, you’ve never actually been inside a barn. What a good sink this would be for a baby with a rubber ducky in the water and shampoo in the eyes. You begin washing your dishes from the night before in this large, tub-like sink. It’s not like you waking up to a mess but tackling last night was not an option. Too much wine, not enough pork lo mein. Thank goodness you were home. Thank goodness you’re always home.
You like the way coffee smells as it brews, something to look forward to each morning. The nutty aroma soon fills the air and the scent alone helps clear your head. You will still use the hazelnut creamer even though the memory sours its sweet flavor.
The cabinet above the coffeemaker is where you keep your mugs. Your favorite mugs are lined up in front, facing forward with their handles all turned to the right. The one with the funny-looking alpaca on it you bought at a tag sale with your best friend because she said the alpaca looked like you. Something about how you wear your hair atop your head. You ease at the sentiment, run your fingers over your messy bun. There’s the large mug your mother bought you on your 31st birthday with the words, “Sweet Dreams” written on it. It was stuffed with packets of chamomile. You love that mug but rarely use it for tea. Instead, its vast size serves the purpose of holding homemade chicken soup, the recipe you also got from your mother one birthday long ago.
And then there is that other mug. The one you bought but never had the chance to give. The white one with the words “fuck you” written in black. You smile when you look at it, think of its meaning. Then your lips press together, your cheeks twinge in torment. You two had a strange way of saying I love you.
You choose that mug this morning, the first time it’s ever been used. Are you doing it to torture yourself or to help you survive? To show yourself it’s only a mug just like the rest. It has no more meaning than the Christmas mug with the leg lamp you use every year when decorating the tree, or the flowery one your sister gave you with the saying, “Not just sisters, but also best friends.” The very one she always uses when she comes to visit each month.
You fill the empty mug with a spill of hazelnut creamer before adding the coffee, a little trick you taught yourself one morning when you were restless. When you woke up to his voice in your head, reciting his words from the last time you spoke over the phone. Please, he said. Don’t cry.
He always added the creamer after the coffee was poured. He always stirred yours for you, smiling with that one dimple. At his condo, he served the coffee in matching mugs. Solid ceramic ones, a mossy green. He was older than you, more grown up. Now, your coffee doesn’t have to be stirred. Ha! You can drink it without any help, in any unsophisticated mug you choose.
“At least I don’t have to dirty a spoon,” you said the first time you tried your creamer trick. “That’s something.” And it was something — is something.
You raise the mug to your mouth but pull it away, staring at it, reading the words to yourself before saying them aloud for the coffeemaker to hear.
“Fuck you.”
And again, this time louder.
“FUCK. YOU.”
You cover your mouth, feel your cheeks flush under your hand as you think about your neighbor below. You think this will make you feel better, yelling a real fuck you into the world, one directed to your ex and this time not in a loving way. Not in the way you both intended it.
But you don’t feel better. Not in the slightest. Those stupid, obscene words still soften your heart every time you use them. You still think of the playful way you said them to one another. A joke stemmed from that comedy show you watched together on his couch, eating ice-cream sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies with mint chip wedged in the middle. “Fuck you,” he’d say, kissing your cheek with sticky, cold lips. “Fuck you,” you’d say back, wiping your mouth with a finger, smiling at the screen.
You no longer watch that show. You no longer find it funny. It was a silly joke between you, one you never told anyone. It was too early on in the relationship for love or jokes about being in love. No one would understand. No one needed to know.
“Fuck you.”
You dump out the coffee from that mug into the big sink. The brown liquid slips down the white porcelain and into the drain.
You clean it and place it into the cabinet next to the big orange one with the phrase, “Go get em’ tiger.” The very mug you took to work when you had an office to go to, a small, sad cubicle that sucked the life from you.
There are other mugs, too. The pinkish one with the words “I’d rather be reading” used for that afternoon cup of coffee, and the mug shaped like a pumpkin that you save for fall. You look at your cabinet full of colorful mugs, all with different sayings, meanings. Why do you have so many? You never thought of yourself as a collector.
You reach all the way in the back of the cabinet, passing the favorites, and loop a finger around the handle of an unknown mug. It’s a simple navy blue one of average size and shape. But there’s no writing on it, no image. You have no memory of this mug at all.
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