Tasseography of English Breakfast Tea at 30,000 Feet
Amy Fant
If I don’t make it, tell my mother
that I read the leaves wrong.
The letter Q, the symbol for
fertility, must have been
an octopus—the length of its
arms knotted by the sloping
white curve of my teacup.
Tell her that I might have
finished the tea too quickly,
it was after 4:00, and the cup
was cooling in my hand.
Tell her that I’m sorry,
I never read the book she gave
me on Indian Head nickels,
and I forgot to visit the bee
museum in Kingstree. But
the sun is setting up here
like a stained-glass lantern—
even the clouds are turning
orange. Tell her that, too.
Tell her everything.
Amy Fant’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Driftwood Press, The Cumberland River Review, Weave Magazine, Rock & Sling, and The Nashville Review among others. She finished her MFA at Emerson College in Boston, and is currently writing and eating her way through Cape Town, South Africa.