“Ma,” I said last night, my hands itching from the emptiness that seems to lurk in every corner of our apartment these days. “What are these?”

My mom looked over. I held up a plastic container of red and orange bags, full of miscellaneous ingredients. She took her black wire glasses off, blinking a little as her vision adjusted, and set the folded lenses on the clothed table. “Tea bags.”

“Tea bags,” I repeated, because I wasn’t sure how to respond. “They don’t look like tea bags. Aren’t tea bags supposed to be cloth? So the herbs can go through the liquid?”

“Mmm,” my mother hummed, because she had been typing on her laptop and probably not paying enough attention to formulate a genuine response— much like me, in a way. Then she said, “No, you open the packet, and then you pour what’s inside into hot water.”

I held the packet closer to my eyes, examining its contents. I realized that the things inside were those to be dissolved or diffused; sugar crystals. Tea leaves. Spiced seeds. Flowers. Etcetera.

My mother would often be seen around with a mug full of steaming yellow liquid, petals suspended and frozen in time. She would sip at it, the vapor fogging up her glasses, and I would watch her eyes cloud over; the closest I would ever get to seeing her crying.

My mother always covers her eyes when she cries. Windows are the eyes to the soul— it’s why they’re drawn so large in cartoons, why they’re always talked about like prayers and holy scriptures. She draws curtains around them, because letting light in when you’re shrouded in darkness is what weakness is, and she puts her stubby fingers over her eyelids. Double the protection for fragile glass.

“Do you want one?” She asked, turning back to her laptop.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, and I took a mug from the cabinet and started to fill it.

I microwaved it. Took the water out. Cut open a packet— an orange one. Dumped the contents inside. Watched as yellow started emerging from the herbs.

I went back to my room, to get back to writing and drawing. I sat at my table and watched the steam rise from the mug, sitting at my laptop and humming to myself.

I went to sleep having not taken a single sip of the tea.

I woke up today and the tea was cold. The flowers had wilted in the tea, petals floating up to the top. Tea leaves and various seeds had sunken to the bottom of the cup, and the yellow flavored water was all condensed in the middle.

My mother was out on a shopping spree, so I took the mug from off my cold desk, walked into the empty, cold kitchen, and poured the stale tea down the drain.