Family Portrait

Cream pooling
on her now-cold tea, mother
holds her ceramic tea mug

gingerly,
wary

of the hairline fracture
along its handle, and

quite used to sister's sunsign
tattooed along its curve:

a rather fat fish, forever
orange, grinning
a slightly loopy grin

and forever apart from its twin

on my sister's mug. Pristine,
fractureless, fewer tea stains,

lagging

behind

twenty eight years' worth
tea-drinking —

almost doppelgangers, just like
their owners.

Father drinks tea by the gallons,
and his tea-cup grips
could fill a dictionary I might write.

Someday.

For now, there's a careful grasping
of steel rims
of steaming hot tumblers, thumb

                                        half a world apart

                          from his forefinger

there's a palm
folding into an umbrella
over railway station paper cups

there's four fingers curling around
a handle, thumb
sticking up sorely

there's also that casual
tipping
       of his tea – as varied

       as his mudra-like grips –
                   into the eager hug

                   of a neighbouring glass

the fall easing the fever.

I look at his hands

wondering
if he could ever have been
a dancer, this man who lumbers
along and mocks my gait
for being too much like a boy's, and
laughs at my love

or lack thereof

for tea. Former heretic
coffee-drinker, I have now

returned

to the fold of people who swear
by tea for everything: hysterics

or hernia or even heartbreak. But

prodigal daughters, I think, don't
con themselves

into believing
things could be the same

as before: so here I am, odd
one out, black sheep,

drinking black tea

and dreaming of brewing that perfect
cup of lemon tea

and taking it
in a coffee cup.