Amanda Dawn Benningfield

I’m drinking tea and I’m pissed about it. It’s not the tea I’m opposed to. It makes me feel evolved, like I have banished the childhood ritual of strawberry milk through a bendy straw and replaced nostalgia with something that burns the roof of my mouth. Tip of my tongue is too fatigued to care about the taste. 

Today I got a phone call that my dog is being put down, and this isn’t the first call. I have received this call five times for the same dog. Today, when I received this call, I thought this dog was already dead. And maybe this dog is dead or maybe the family heirloom that is Alzheimer's has finally been passed down to my dad
or to me. 
Fill the neti pot up with tea scalding enough to cauterize the inherited.

I am pissed because my tea is cold and trust me, I’m a sucker for an ice cold oat milk latte on a day where the snow sticks to the ground. But today I can’t bring myself to boil the water. Instead, I stand face-to-face with a kettle handed down to me by someone who doesn’t remember my name.

or how they know me,

or that they know me.

I’m a stranger they moved in only to evict, catfished them in their conscious moments.

I’m drinking a tea I got from the gas station and I want to be really psyched about it. I want it to be refreshing and sweet and I’ll take it to the park and drink it in one gulp and I’ll call my ex just to tell her about it and that will be enough to win her back.