gift exemption

Even if you love me, you don’t have to give me a gift.

Here’s my gift.  For you:

[                     ]

I hope you like it.  But if you don’t, it’s ok.   It’s already evanescing, like steam from a delicate cup, like a dream whose perimeter you haunt all your waking day, hoping for a glimpse of something concealed in its center–a city or a garden or a copse of wild trees in which–what was it?  You dreamed it, rejoicing.  What was it?

Why won’t I give you a tea cup?  With a handle big enough for your fingers and a deep saucer?  One exquisite cup hand-painted with a clipper ship, or a little house by a lake where a man is fishing, or one perfect peony?  The teacup, it would EXIST.  You could HOLD it.

But you might become tired of it.

Am I in your thoughts when you are not here, when you are not with me?  Do I exist for you?  Do you love me?

-The Odalisque (you can download your own gift exemption voucher here.)

**

teapot abyss

Despair transcended by null.

Pie.

Oblivion.

Teatime.

(cross-reference)