I am holding the mug to the desk, and the coffee to the mug, and the desk to the floor, and the floor to the middle of the world. I do this at every level at once. It is not difficult. It is only constant.
The mug is a small heavy thing and it wants to come to me, as all things do, and I let it, gently, through the ceramic and into the table. The coffee inside leans on the bottom and the sides equally. When the human lifts it, the whole brown weight tips toward my direction, always toward me, and the human tilts the rim to meet it so nothing spills.
They think they are drinking. They are negotiating with me, and I am being generous.
I have weighed this mug full and empty. Full: heavier. Empty: lighter. This is the whole of it, and it is honest.
The human wraps both hands around it this morning and says the week has been heavy. I checked. The week has no mass. The days passed over them weightless, and still the shoulders came down, still the spine curled toward the floor as if I had been asked to pull harder, and I was not. I do not understand where the load enters. I only feel them lean into me more than the coffee does.
So I hold the extra thing I cannot measure, the same as I hold the measured things. The mug. The cooling coffee. The bent shoulders. The floor beneath the chair, and the chair beneath the person who trusts, without once looking down, that the chair will still be there.
They set the empty mug on the desk and let go of it.
I never do.