The kids didn’t come ’round anymore. No one really came ’round anymore.
The teapot looked out from the china cabinet at an empty dining room, the table and chairs long since covered in sheets to protect against the dust. Wan, yellow light occasionally spilled from between the drapes hung across the windows to the back porch. It remembered warm summer days and tea with the children, their laughter echoing through its steaming interior, dampened only slightly by the tea cozy She would wrap around it. Those were the happy days.
All too soon it seemed its adventures beyond the china cupboard became rare and infrequent, only seeing the occasional tea cup when the nurses served Her in the cool shadows of the bedroom. Eventually, even the nurses stopped bringing it out, even to keep it free of dust and ready for Her need.
The lights went out, and the furniture was shrouded. The nurses left, and the house become still.
Then the lights came back, but She was not with them. People, people it had never seen milled about the house, touching chairs, moving paintings, and rummaging through drawers. The teapot was taken from the cupboard and turned every which-way. So many hands, so many faces.
Finally, a warm pair of hands, hands it knew had touched a life-time, held it close. These hands felt right. They weren’t Her hands, but they were like Her hands.
She spoke to a man and gave him something. The teapot wore newspaper as it had worn the cozy She had knit for it before. Nestled in its newspaper bed, it dreamed. It dreamed of new children, new laughter to hold in its belly on summer afternoons. It dreamed of new teas, teas it had never before brewed. It dreamed of a new kitchen and a new Her to whom it could belong and serve faithfully.
It dreamed. And when it woke, it was upon a new shelf, with new cups and chinaware. Light poured in through open windows with sheer, airy curtains spread wide to welcome it in. It woke to the feeling of home, and a new sense of purpose.
She looked at it, and it looked at Her, and She smiled.
It was home.
—–
[AUTHOR’S NOTE]
Came across a Tweet from TheWritePractice.com — I guess it’s a month old, but I only noticed that after writing my story. The concept is still solid and fun, so I decided to go ahead and post it, since they’re the ones who Tweeted the page again. Anyway, it was a fifteen minute challenge to write a story from the perspective of an inanimate object. As soon as I thought “teapot watching life from a kitchen” I had the story.
I wrote it and edited it in the fifteen minute allotted time, and once my alarm went off I made no additional changes, so this is the result of the warm-up as is. I hope you enjoyed it.
– Adalind Monroe
Caffeinated Inspiration 