thoughts as the water boils, almost a story

so i'm in the kitchen heating water for tea. used to be i'd use a bodum kettle, but it's getting old and turns out to use too much electricity so i switched to stovetop. stovetop is gas. i use this little pot i think was designed for turkish coffee, but stainless. whatever. it's just the right amount of water. so. like i said. i'm heating water for tea. it hadn't yet boiled when i noticed something floating. yuck. i thought maybe it was a spider. is it bad luck to kill spiders? however, it was not a spider, when i fished it out it was a fruit fly. definitely not my fault. had to have flown in. how long do i need to boil the water to kill fruit fly germs? i wasn't sure.

maybe a slow count to sixty.

and my mind could have gone anywhere, but it took me back to ten years old. in the kitchen boiling water for tea. not my tea though. tea for the stepmother.

there is something distilled in that moment.

i hated her. plain and simple. i thought she was stupid and worthless and evil. the very first cuss word i ever used was the first one i ever learned and i would sit in the dark in my closet and call her that word over and over like it gave me power. she had migraines, or maybe she didn't, they certainly seemed to be conveniently timed.

maybe i've told you this story before...

anyway, one day she had a migraine and i had to make her tea...

we had one of those whistling tea kettles. it always sat on the stove. it had a little water in it. i didn't dump that water. it was going to be boiled; whatever was in it had been boiled. it didn't really occur to me to check it. i boiled the water. it whistled. i shut it off quickly. she had a migraine. i put the tea bag in the cup. i poured the water.

three large swollen cockroaches floated to the surface.

i hate cockroaches.

i stared at them.

i needed to make the tea over. there were cockroaches in the tea. she would yell at me for taking too long if i started over. there were cockroaches in the tea. she had probably heard the kettle. there were cockroaches in the tea.

i fished them out.

i took her the tea.

she thanked me.



she deserved it.

yes yes, fine. she created an environment where doing the thing i actually wanted to do was the one thing most likely to avoid punishment.

our only win-win.

and i won.

i would not have given my worst enemy cockroach tea. but i wasn't going to be yelled at for saving her from cockroach tea. fuck her. drink up.



and it really isn't like that was my finest moment.

but in a way it was...

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