The Forgotten Teacup:
It all began with a forgotten teacup—a porcelain relic tucked away in the dusty attic of imagination. Its delicate curves held memories, like echoes of laughter and whispered confidences. What if this cup could speak? What stories would it tell?

The image of a young girl, Sarah, emerged—an old soul with eyes like sunlit tea. She became the custodian of these cups, each one a vessel for dreams. As she sipped her chamomile tea, feeling its warmth seep into her veins. The steam whispered tales of forgotten gardens and moonlit nights. Of the chipped white porcelain cup, once plain, decorated with rose petals. It never held tea and in reality, it was only pretty in her imagination. When she was very young, she loved the smell of the wild roses down the lane. Roses, ah, the eternal romantics! Their petals, soft as whispered secrets, beckoned her. Sarah collected fallen rose petals, pressing them between pages of her journal. Each petal held a fragment of her heart. The scent of roses became her ink, and their thorns, her muse. She wove their fragility into her existence, making her a poetess of petals.

The age of wonder- the magical threshold of childhood innocence mingled with adolescent yearning. Sarah recalled her days of scribbling secrets in diaries, dreaming of hidden realms.
The attic of memory yielded treasures: a chipped saucer, a midnight-black cup, and a vanishing cup of blue porcelain. Sarah’s world expanded with each memory savored in sips.

When Sarah left home at the age of 16, she felt a bittersweet ache—the closing chapter of girlhood. Her final brew shared with David blended longing and foreboding. The tea tasted of endings. He didn’t know. She couldn’t bear to tell him what she planned.

Perhaps it was her yearning for those transformative years with David that fueled her story. We all carry our porcelain cups, don’t we? Filled with fragile memories, hopes, and the promise of futures yet to be written.

Inspiration bloomed like a rose in spring—a fusion of forgotten cups, fragrant petals, and the quiet magic of storytelling. After many years of heartache, poems–hidden away in tins, and boxes, in drawers and on floppy disks. Sarah decided it was time. She took the bin of papers downstairs. Though she knew they would be painful to read, the old journals, and scraps of bits, fragmented memories in verse and prose, She knew it was time. She brought down the teacups as well. And set them on the corner shelf. She began to read and remember…

P.S. If you ever chance upon a midnight-black cup filled to the brim with spiced dragon red chia tea, during a thunderstorm, sip it slowly as you stare out from the rain-soaked window pane, into the darkness, just before the lightning strikes but not after the thunder–You might just glimpse other worlds.