melted ice in a mug

this morning I walked to my corner store to buy a carton of eggs so I could make my favorite cake. It’s cold today, snow is blowing and ice hardens on the bumpers of cars as they drive by me.

I grabbed my carton of eggs and walked up to the cashier, waiting as the young girl finished checking out the man in front of me. a few aisles over there are three other young girls, laughing behind a different counter at something on a phone. as the girl in front of me scans my eggs, she is not there. she’s so focused on the other conversation, on her distance from the community, on whatever it is she’s feeling. as she’s staring at the group of girls, I am staring at her.

I know precisely how she feels in that moment.

I smile and thank her, she replies but is hardly able to remove her attention from the other girls. I leave the store and cross the street back to my home.

a few hours later I pour boiling water into a mug over a bag of jasmine green tea while the cake is turning golden in the oven. I am impatient to take a sip, so I grab a few cubes of ice.

I plop them into the mug, watching as the ice disappears into the rest of the mug, fading away with microscopic bubbles. this image takes me right back to the face of the girl at the store, watching as her emotions bubble out of her in a barely perceptible moment.

presence is powerful.