Spring morning,
quiet. One coyote,
three deer
running in snow.

What else have I seen?
A sparrow hawk in mid-air ******
a robin, a sharp-shinned hawk catch
a rabbit in its talons.

A deaf mute in a pear tree.
Not one wolverine
in Utah or Italy.
Nor a famous samurai.

A young black bear
traverses the lawn in August.
Also quarks. Also oaks.
Do not disturb its progress!

A red fox
alert, no limp
flows silently
across the meadow.

First light, green tea.
A person thinking
epochs and eons.
A platoon of chickadees.

it seems my entire life is defined by drinks.

mother's milk out the womb.

(and maybe those suckles were sweet - it's not like i remember - but her words, for the rest of my life, certainly weren't.)

an hour-long debate, with my best friend at twelve years old - apple or orange juice?

(orange, obviously, is the right answer. we rehash the argument sometimes to this day.)

the day i turn 19, a beer in my hands.

(i'm sat around a campfire with my closest friends, birthdays all older than me - the beer tastes disgusting, as cheap alcohol is, but i'm glad to be there.)

yesterday, i had 1 coffee and 2 mugs of lemon honey tea, 4 glasses of water.

today, no tea, but 2 cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and 3 glasses of water.

i bite at my nails when i'm nervous, swallow down the spit that comes with it, the bile that rises.

last summer, i visited pei, had a raspberry cordial - my favourite drink to date - then bought a case of 4 more to take home with me.

last summer, when i lived in new brunswick, my friends in the same building knew me as the one who would always have a drink in hand - a milk tea, or maybe a pink lemonade, maybe that obscure korean soda i liked.

when i left new brunswick, i took a photo of my 2 trash cans, of the way they were both filled to the brim with empty bottles and cans and jugs.

i still miss the apple cider they made there.

my life is defined by drinks, sips, swallows, taking five minutes to breathe by making myself a nice whipped coffee, trawling the internet for pretty coasters and glassware for an hour in lieu of doing actual work.

Eventually, i close the shopping tabs, take a sip of coffee, and resume with the rest of my life.

Until I turned nineteen,
I never considered where I had been.
I couldn't be seen.
As I have never been on the scene.

Every morrow, I called out to my aunt
To express my love,
and welcome a cup of tea
That is dear to me.

"I hailed to thee,
Aunty, tea."
When she delays a little,
I became a prattle.

A mature lady smiles and places a cup of tea
What a great human is she!

As I had to traverse to another city,
I had to shift to a hostel that had no tea
Not a day did I receive
A mere cup of tea.

Every morrow, every eve,
All I yearn about is only her and I.


Like a mother, the love she showered.
Like a roe,
Neither did I apprehend
Nor did I reciprocate.
Here my mind does thoroughly replicate.
                .... TEA....

Every morrow, every eve
I buy tea,
Just by paying the fee
which I used to get for free.

Not lovingly calling Aunty tea
But,
To an unrelated shopkeeper
Asking, 'Bhaiyah Tea'.

dawn in the garden
fragrant blossoms fill my cup
hot tea with lemon

Even though you know some tea, you aren’t automatically pressed to spill ALL of it. Today’s tea features our roommate Sophie and two grody flavors of betrayal. BTW, I’m being magnanimous by changing the names and not doxxing the creeps.

To set our stage, a doe (we’ll call her Britney) high-school friend of Sophie’s is a Yale freshie this year. They were buddy-hollys back in the day and they’ve been clinging since their reunion.

On another track, Sophie’s been talking to a guy (we’ll call him Cory) in her English class recently and it was clear they were “in-like” but their clocked-up schedules were corking their algorithms.

Sophie and Cory finally got a shot last weekend when they attended a party together. However, it turns out later, at that party, Britney snuck off with Cory and smashed him (they were observed, and everyone carries a camera these days).

So, poor Sophie suffered two betrayals in one night. Cory went-hiking on her and Britney - who she'd told about Cory - did the other woman chisel.

Of course, Cory (just another dog-boy) is already forgotten but the broken friendship drama will live on forever. Why Britney chose to betray Sophie we’ll never know, because that ***** is dead to us.