To Work on Time

“To Work on Time” By: Erickson

Steam bellows from my porcelain cup. Just served. White whisps, alterations above a liquid, rattle the air and perfume into a brief heart, before leaving. Puncturing everyday air with love.

What sits in the porcelain cup?

The cup that breaths in a body of orange meeting yellow. The color of rotting dandelions. Of falling oranges being lost in the field. The color of bricks, the color of hand-shapen hard work, the color of progress.

How many porcelain cups exist in the world?

If I will to be honest with you, I am so jaded. The hearts erupting out of my glass cause my eyes to roll over. I pretend to upchuck as I wipe at squinted lids. “No, I’ll make myself believe that this image doesn’t exist.” Boom, I take my magic.

But magic persists to men that fail to believe.

Men will curse the world as they throw a dagger into their own sides. Live a lifetime or three like this, until that man makes a wish. An internal shooting star. A bubbling wishing well in the stomach. A church with a shattered stained-glass window. The wish comes true, and now, who is God? A man deceives himself to not be deceived by the world.

What sits in the porcelain cup?

Well, it could be a plethora of things.

A blackened cup of coffee straight from the strangling of beans in another country. One man harvests the fruit, the other enjoys.

A pitiful amount of hot chocolate, covered and rotated with miniature and regular marshmallows – creating a prosperous town of sugar with creamy white and toffee brown. A coalition towards civilization, an ounce from each of us.

It depends where you come from, how you see inside my porcelain cup. The level, the angle. It sits on a flimsy wooden table, with one of three legs hobbling the thing. The air inside the mansion resembles a frozen tundra. Here is a dry cold that’s like a wet heat. Florida when you already arrive with a sunburn. Like the flicking of ice off a dead corpse. An uncovering. Revealing the liquid that bellows from your cup.

I relinquish the metal tray beneath the porcelain cup. Tell me. Do I serve to you, or you to me?

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