The Teal Teapot is Brimming

I’ve always been proud of my position. You picked me in teal-blue because that’s your real favourite colour. Pink used to serve you, and it served you well.

I’m not going to pretend pink didn’t do a good job and soften your darker days. But we both know I’m your true love who brightens your days, calms the loudness of the flashier colours and gives you oceans of possibility.

Once shades of aqua, teal and turquoise entered your life, you were finally filled to the brim with colour-happiness.

I proudly serve you your tea every night, holding the tea bags, the scalding water, and the anticipation of the first perfectly landed sip.

As you pour the steamy water into me, you warm my ceramic through my thick walls. I stand tall and loyal, like a sentinel, carrying your tea as a sacred mission. I know how much you love your tea – and me – and I know how tea-time is your favourite time of day, even though I can be left feeling bagged after a while.

But lately, I am boiling with betrayal. You used to handle me just right, right until the very last sip was swallowed. Now? Once the tea steeps, you go ahead and pour the rest into a thermos. A thermos. Who even looks at a thick, awkward, tall thermos and thinks, “Yes. This. Replace the fine china.”

Sure, maybe I crack a little more easily. Maybe I can be broken if you don’t treat me well. And sure, maybe the thermos’s insulation appeals to your temperament.
But let me remind you: I am crafted. By artisans.

That thermos, in all its wannabe-special-too-ness, is manufactured. How could you downgrade yourself, your tea time, and what we had together for something mass-produced and emotionally unavailable? Have you no standards at all?

Like an abandoned cookie platter, I feel be-trayed.

Did I not pour enough of myself into keeping the warmth between us? Did I not go with the flow through all your pivoting whimsies? Turkish tea, black tea, English breakfast, Irish breakfast… the list is embarrassingly long. And I didn’t puff myself up in judgment.

Truly, I am steeping in frustration. I am filled to the brim with your nonsense.

I stand here waiting, loyal, true-blue, proud, while that thermos looms beside me: taller, darker, smugly implying he’ll keep the heat steady long after you fall asleep.

Personally, I think you are seeking something a little more… spicy.

I am boring to you. I am pour-ring to you.

Fine. We all need to serve ourselves first.

Still. I tried my best. I still do. I just wish you would notice what it meant to me to hold your tea. Because right now, I feel used while you are boiling with that thermos thingie. The sad truth is that I have to let this wash away and accept that I have been replaced the moment it matters most to me.

And I don’t know why I’m not good enough anymore.

I hope he leaks in your pot one day.

I would never.

Oh no! I overflowed! I was just boiling!

Sorry, love – how ’bout a cuppa?

I will be the tea in our TEAM.

Just don’t lose your steam on me.

I am mist-afied without you!
Oh, please fill me again!!!
I can hold you!
You are NOT too hot for me!

I will cool you down.
I will warm you up!

I will…
I will…..

Oh. What’s this?

Simmer down a minute…

David’s calling.

Oh, it’s David. He knows how to treat a bagged-up pot.

I am now…

David’s Tea.

Ta ta.

I’m leaf-ing you now.

Hmph.

Author’s Note: Teapot loyalty is real. Thermos betrayal is also real.