Marcia J. Pradzinski

I don’t know when I found the cup, my new keepsake. It was probably some time when I was clearing the dishes from the counter to rinse and stack in the dishwasher. I noticed several stray cups with coffee-dribble marks huddled next to a clutter of objects at the side of the sink.  One was a short mug, a brown line circling its lip. I kept it after my mother died. It reminded me of her brown eyes, and how as adults she and I chatted and shared coffee at the kitchen table.

I was about to rinse it, but  stopped short. What stared at me from inside the mug – a coffee stain in the shape of a perfectly-formed heart – left me astonished. How did it get there?  Did my mother somehow have a hand in its unlikely birth? I don’t know, but its presence recreated our link to each other. 

The mug now lies, the heart facing forward, in the spice cabinet where its message peeks at me time and again. It is one cup I’ll never wash.