Home Brewed Tea of Bitter Bitter Memory

Home Brewed Tea of Bitter Bitter Memory

Some days, when the cold rainy fog of life descends I retreat into my memory. I walk even measured steps through the kitchen of my recollection. The one cobwebbed windowsill is alive with herbs of all varieties, each leaf coated with a layer of dust. At first I quickly and haphazardly pick them, but as the dust takes flight into the air, my progress slows. And as more new leaves appear so does my clarity fade.

My thirst deepens as my lungs coat with dust. I pick the last few, and begin my preparations. First I rinse the innumerable specs of dust away which cling to the ridges of each moment. They seem clean enough, though the air is blurred by the invisible unwanted, which become all too visible in the stream of light though the window. I crush each leaf, patiently attempting to extract meaning from these moments; some seem to burst forth with strong fragrances, triggering familiar feelings from within. Others I grind longer and longer and feel nothing; nothing but the emptiness of past tastes and smells my saturated senses refuse to welcome in. After all the moments are processed, I sweep them into my filtered strainer.

I fill the kettle with pure tear water and place it on the stove. My skin reluctantly embraces the onslaught; waves of heat wash over, they release the swift cascading sweat of regret, the light steam billows and swirls and mixes with the airborne dust causing it to fall muting the colors as does volcanic ash poison made ever more potent. I pace the small space as the kettle starts to boil just as my Father did before me; my bare feet leaving tracks in the thin film of dust-mud now covering all I see and touch. Then the familiar scream, the pressure is too much, the heat has done its brutal task,

let the steeping begin.

I thrust the muddled mixture of moments into the scalding sorrow water and wait for the visions to come forth. And appear they do, twisted, ephemeral, with a familiar torturous bent. They haunt, entertain bemuse and befuddle. Speak, they, in wafting hissing whispers of love lost that was never had, moments lost amidst the recollections’ rushing waves that pound, engulf, release and swallow whole again. I am steeped in the permeation of painful indecision, foolish follies all; originators of scars that are my mark to this day. As happens every time, I have chosen my moments incorrectly, and let them steep far too long. I am left with this pot of potent poison of my creation. This is the concoction which I crave to imbibe. I surrender to it so it might digest me and make good on its promise to paralyze, to sharply dull the hurt of now from which I am retreating. This is how I make the bitter bitter tea of muddled moments in memory.