The Cup

You hold it to the light and the light goes through.

Not through the glaze - the glaze is solid, hairline cracks where the tea sat too long, where the morning repeated, where your hands warmed the clay until the clay remembered the shape of your holding.

You said this cup was blue. It is not blue. I am looking at it now and it is the colour of November - not the month but the light in the month, the light that gives more than it says it will give, the light that has been here all along and only looks strange because I am looking for you inside it.

The cup is on the table. The table has not moved. You have not moved it. I am telling you this because you asked me to tell you about the room and the room is the cup and the cup is the colour of the morning you left which is the same morning that is still here.

I am not correcting myself. The correction is the poem - the first look was mine, the second look is yours, and the cup is the colour of the distance between them.