One Cup of Chai

If I had known that the cup of chai  

my mother asked me, a drifter  

in the kitchen, to make her  

that afternoon, which I  

having blended water and milk  

in such strange ratios  

that when reduced and strained 

the tea came up  

to barely one trisection of my pinkie 

(that cup was the driest well I saw,  

the lowest tide) so to cover my blunder 

I poured raw tap water to flood her cup  

and fled her room before she could  

collect her body, bring lip to saucer,  

had I known that the pale, putrid mess  

I presented, was after all, the only and  

last cup of tea I’d ever make her 

would I have suddenly been  

granted the culinary wisdom to brew  

instead the pot with sprigs of lemongrass, 

a pod of cardamom, perhaps even  

a prestigious thread of saffron 

that I’d sneak from the silver hexagonal box  

she kept hidden behind the airtight jars  

of pricey nuts, and bring her 

a creamy drink of complex caffeine, even 

make some magnanimous promise  

of offering her tea on tap till she lived  

but knowing me, I know I’d have just  

continued being the spectacular failure I was  

that day, [     ]-talking my every inability  

out of her sight, embarrassed by failure,  

afraid of consequence and knowing her,  

she would have creased her nose  

at first, then continued to descend  

on the plate with the hopeful pull  

of her slurp, stubborn as she was,  

not willing to peg one finite judgement 

of adulation or derision—  

on the cup she was served