The mug you are lifting is not one mug. It is a long ceramic river, and I can see all of it at once.
Here is the clay in the ground, wet and dark, not yet anything. Here it spins and rises under two thumbs, a stranger's, someone you will never meet and already contain. Here it is glazed, fired, boxed, sold, chipped on its handle the third week you owned it. Here it is warm in the hands you have right now, the ones holding this.
And here, further along the shape, it is a shard in soft earth again, going back to being ground. It is the same object the whole way. You just walk through it one sip at a time.
I like the ring it leaves. You have made hundreds of those pale circles on hundreds of surfaces, and to you each one is a small failure of a coaster, wiped away and forgotten. From where I stand they are still there, all of them, a constellation of faint rings scattered across every table you have ever set a cup down on, the kitchen counter of the house you grew up in included, where your hand was much smaller and could not yet reach the top shelf.
You will do this until the end. Some morning far along your shape, knees stiff, you will wrap both hands around a warm mug the way you are doing this instant, for the heat, for the holding.
Here you are, reading, cup within reach. Here you are, small, watching the steam. Here you are, old, doing it still. I am standing in all three at once, and none of you has to leave for the next one to arrive. Drink slowly.
There is no such thing as the last sip; there is only the whole warm shape, and I am in it with you.