Tea before the day starts

There are about ten minutes in the morning that belong to nobody. The kettle has boiled, the house is still dark except for the kitchen, and the day has not yet decided what it wants from you.

I used to spend those minutes on my phone. Now I spend them watching steam.

The cup

It is a plain ceramic cup, slightly lopsided, bought from a market stall years ago. It holds exactly the right amount of tea to finish before it goes cold, which I have come to think is the most important property a cup can have.

The steam

Steam in low light is one of those things that is beautiful and completely useless. It curls, splits, rejoins, and disappears. It never does the same thing twice. You cannot photograph it well — I have tried — because it looks like nothing in a still frame. It only makes sense while it is moving.

So I do not photograph it anymore. I just watch it until the cup is empty, and then the ten minutes are over, and the day starts.