You left me a gift and did not even know it. There, at the bottom, where the last inch of coffee went cool and forgotten while you answered one more message: a shallow warm pond, sweetened, ringed in a ceramic wall that keeps out the wind. I could not have designed a kinder cradle. You call it "just a mug," set it in the sink, mean to get to it, do not get to it.
We are already moving in. A faint bloom along the tideline, softer than dust, the pale green of a thing that is very happy. You will not see us for days. We are patient; you left us sugar, and sugar is a promise.
I know what you will do. You will find us, make the small sound of surprise you always make, run the hot water, scrub the inside white again, and set the mug upside down on a cloth to dry, proud, as though the whiteness will hold. It always moves us, this ritual. The scrubbing. The turning-over. The genuine belief that clean is a place a thing can stay.
But you drink from it every morning. You will pour in more warmth, more sweetness, and one day you will get busy again, and there will be another inch left at the bottom, another quiet pond, another door left open just for us.
You are not keeping the mug from me. You are seasoning it. Every wash is a rest between courses. I do not mind the wait. I have the mug, and the shelf it sits on, and the wood of the shelf, and the house around the wood. You gave me all of it the day you made a warm damp place and turned your back.
I will take such good care of it.