Attempt not to Vomit

Whenever things get to be a little too much, I make the tea. It’s been the definite article tea since my brother and I first saw a sketch show as kids that, for reasons I no longer remember, featured two brothers who would constantly as one another, “Are y’makin’ the tea?”

Once the tea has brewed, I sit the mug on the white of countertop and give it a brisk stir, so that the tea laps up along the uppermost edge of the mug. I pour the milk into the heart of that vortex and watch the muddy blot whirl at the core of that translucent brown.

There is a wall about nine feet tall on the way home from the train station. Decades of soil creep have moved its base so that it leans ten or fifteen degrees away from the road. It’s no quicker than walking around, but, whenever it’s dry, I sink my fingers into the cracks in the brickwork and plant a hand in the soft moss along its top, then fall to the loose earth on the opposite side, sinking slightly into the spongy soil.

These are two of the knots in the otherwise even grain of my day.