Tea

by Jon

I never was a tea drinker.  Double espresso from the CoffeeTown drive thru every morning to the office.  But one morning the barista gave me the wrong order, and I found myself drinking tea.  And liking it.  So I started making my own.

It’s a simple process. Heat the water, add the tea, then wait.  I got an electric kettle that would heat the water for me.  Toss in a teabag of Lipton or Tetley, then I was good to go.  But after a while, I found myself wondering if it could be any better.

I spent some time in the tea section of Earth Organics, where a helpful young lady got me to drop the mass-produced stuff in favor of fair trade, loose organic teas from India, Japan, China. Made a few other changes. Told my boss at corporate to take a flying leap. I swapped the electric kettle to my neighbor for his battered old tea pot his ex-wife had left behind.  The water took longer to boil now, but I didn’t mind.  I felt more grounded.

Unfortunately, I bounced a couple checks at Earth Organics and the tea girl told me to go to hell.  I started getting my tea from a hole-in-the-wall bodega up the street, trading them stuff from my apartment.  The teas they carried had labels in languages that made my eyes cross if I tried to read them.  Some tasted like sunsets when you were twelve and in love, others like black licorice and a punch in the nose.  I liked those better.

It was about that time the gas got cut off.  Heating the water was tricky, until I picked up a pamphlet lying in the street.  Pyrokinesis Made Easy, it said, but it still took me staring at my kettle for three days, eyes unblinking, focusing until the water molecules finally began to heat.

The night I left my apartment for the last time I dreamed I floated upon a dark ocean that smelled of cloves and cinnamon while a voice like steam whispered a secret I could only half-understand.  Each night the dream came to me again, and again, and I understand it now.  I will walk until I find enough water to let my body steep in it, and I will become one with the infinite, one with the tea.