Kaique Antonio
A Story in Eight Non-Sonnets

Kaique Antonio - A Story in Eight Non-Sonnets

Fiction
Kaique Antonio is a queer writer, translator, and teacher from Brazil. Having lost a parent when he was twenty, writing has become his form of exploring death, grief, and other aspects of life. He… Read more »
Rukman Ragas
A warm cup of tea

Rukman Ragas - A warm cup of tea

Fiction
A literary and speculative writer from Sri Lanka, Rukman's stories that explore queerness, grief, storytelling, and immigration under a postcolonial lens can be found in Tasavvur, Khoreo, Consequence… Read more »
Norie Suzuki
Playing with Fire

Norie Suzuki - Playing with Fire

Fiction
Norie Suzuki was born and educated bilingually in Tokyo, Japan, where she currently writes and works as a simultaneous interpreter. She received an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College… Read more »
Stephen Cicirelli
Saints

Stephen Cicirelli - Saints

Fiction
Stephen Cicirelli has his MFA from Columbia University. He is currently a full-time lecturer in the English Department at Saint Peter’s University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared, or are… Read more »
Bobby Bangert
Shelter

Bobby Bangert - Shelter

Fiction
Bobby Bangert is originally from Baltimore, Maryland, and currently lives, works, and writes in Washington, DC. His work has previously appeared in HAD and JAKE. When he's not writing he works as a… Read more »
Michael Don
Sneak Peek

Michael Don - Sneak Peek

Fiction
Michael Don is the author of the story collection Partners and Strangers (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2019) and Coeditor of Kikwetu: A Journal of East African Literature. His work has appeared… Read more »
Ryan White
The Big Blow

Ryan White - The Big Blow

Fiction
Ryan White is a writer and attorney living in Seattle with his cat, Django. He's currently revising his first novel, The Retreat. His work has appeared in Hunger Mountain Review, J Journal, Red Rock… Read more »
Linden Hibbert
The Elgin Marbles

Linden Hibbert - The Elgin Marbles

Fiction
Linden Hibbert is a short story writer who lives in England with her husband, kids, and dog. She's just finished her first collection as part of a PhD in creative writing at UEA. Her stories have been… Read more »
Melody Sun
The Hummingbirds

Melody Sun - The Hummingbirds

Fiction
Melody Sun is a Chinese Canadian writer living in Vancouver. Born in China, she immigrated to Canada with her family when she was 15 years old. Melody graduated from the Simon Fraser University… Read more »

A warm cup of tea

Rukman Ragas

When I fell down the stairs of my grandmother's house, shattering my fat and first toenail neatly in half, ammamma sat me down and cleaned my wounds with quiet but firm assurances. She then left me crying and made tea. My little hands curled around the tumbler, holding the warmth to my chest. The hot milk poured into brown powder with a hint of ginger and cardamom washed away my pain. I was five.

When my O/Level results came, words of everyone I knew turned into blades. About how much my widowed mother suffered for me, how they expected better of me, how I would always be a burden to her. My mother brought me a cup of tea, plain and black with a pinch of sugar because we could no longer afford milk powder. She didn’t speak, but she added ginger to it. I huddled into my tea, making a shield out of the bitterness.

The day I first kissed a girl, we went on a date by the lake. We ate salted mangos and spiced veralu and threw popcorn to the fishes and ducks. We held hands, her shyness and my anxiety underpinning each other, the butterflies and worms threatening to burst out of our stomachs. We got tea from a brand truck that sells the same mediocre shit always, paper cups tiny and capricious between our fingers before I leaned into her.

When they found a boy in my bed, I was coming back with masala tea. Kamala akka made the best masala tea in the neighbourhood and I wanted to treat him. Then they took him away and the full cask, Kamala akka’s special recipe, sat unopened for weeks before someone threw it out.

At my mother’s funeral, I served Nestea to our guests. I couldn't bear to be the chief mourner, to look at her crumpled body day and night, so instead I gathered the children and set up a tea squad. Every person who came to give me condolences got served tea straight from the machine we rented from Piyumi akki’s cafe. Sometimes, when the powder ran out, it only served hot water and I drank it, one sip at a time. It tasted like tears.

I was drinking the hospital cafe’s (terrible) tea and munching on their (divine) muffins when my test results came. Yes, I was positive. No, there was nothing more they could do. They could make me comfortable, though. I sipped the tea as my partner told me this, his voice wobbling like it was on a precipice. I drank until it fogged up my glasses, the liquid heating my chest, then crushed it within my hands before dropping it. I put my arms around him, my hands now accustomed to holding anyone regardless of gender, and he broke down, howling for the whole hospital to hear.

When my body hurt everywhere, I became cruel. I was not graciously dying, and he was not kindly caring, a combination that led to many powder keg days. But I was dying, and he was caring, so he always made me tea after our spat and then let me cry into his shirt as he rocked me to sleep.

One day, when we were both tucked in bed, he curled around me like I was something he could protect. I told him he felt like a blanket, warm and lovely, and hard to let go of. He replied, “You, my love, are a warm cup of tea, something whose taste I’ll chase for the rest of my life.”

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