Mismatched Tea Set (final copy)

Take a careful look around my room. Spin slowly—can you see them? Do you remember? Can you recall the threesome’s last use before they took permanent residence in musty towels and cardboard boxes? There they stand—two cups with matching patterns of soft-coloured petals and delicately curved handles alongside a petite, midnight blue dish with a modern, uneven lip. Displayed one next to the other, the patterns, colours, and forms intertwine to create a pitiful entourage of petty treasures. Still, I am terrified to handle the dishes, picturing my panic at the sight of scattered slivers and powdered porcelain decorating my floor.

I stare aimlessly, waiting until I feel you sit beside me. I shed my teenage immaturity and transform into the insightful child everyone once was. You and I, no longer relatives, but playmates, dress up with your exotic costume jewelry, elaborate hats, and
traditionally banned make-up. In my plastic oven I bake raspberry scones, pound cake, and, your favorite, my secret-ingredient cookies to serve on the flat, blue dish. I fill the small teapot with my finest of teas and the matching cup with both sugar and creamer, remember their inability to ever mix? In most authentic British accents, we chat about the weather, our families, and the annoying boys in my first grade class.

“More tea, Kemaw?” I ask. You smile, pleased, and hold your cup towards me for the tea I just brewed on my plastic stove. I reach for the teapot.

When my fingers hit the flawless, biting porcelain, I awake. It was so vivid, but not the reality for which I hoped. I have never seen you. You have never seen me. You never knew I existed. You chose to never know. We never played dress-up. We never hosted tea parties for my dolls. We never talked. You never smiled at me. You never gave me a chance. You never gave yourself a chance. How could this be what you wanted?

I miss you. Some days I search, confused, for some solution to my grief, my unexplainable grief for a woman whose existence ended far before my own began. Part of me is incomplete, my broken identity lies between dusty pages of lost stories and old photographs. Without you, I would never exist. But with you, would not my existence be different?

I imagine you every day when your mismatched tea set catches my gaze. I dream of our strong friendship built on similar personalities and interests, ones I developed on my own, uncannily resembling yours. I envision our cancelled tea party with your exquisite dishes. I wish for a grandmother, not an apparition poised behind a glass picture frame. All these visions, aspirations, false hopes, they are not reality. Only one statement, only three simple words can I say in truth, I love you.