Skip to main content

Hot Tea, Hot Tongue.

I burned my tongue today. I thought I had mastered the art of drinking hot tea on a hot day. But instead, all I got was a hot tongue.

Now, it feels sensitive everywhere. My taste buds feel fried. I had savored the burn when I sipped the sweet, hot tea. But when I sat down to ponder whether life needed a purpose at the reading club, all I could feel was the afterburn of my poor tongue.

Life and its purpose felt so trivial at that moment. The sting in my mouth made everything else fade away. I tried to find some meaning in the pain, but it was just a reminder of how delicate we are. I couldn't romanticize this pain. I could only feel it as it was—wretched and annoying and simply uncomfortable. I couldn't wag my tongue around in public, and I didn't want to do that anyway.

I bought an ice cream to cool it. That helped. The cold sweetness was a relief, a temporary escape from the discomfort. But then, with my sore throat, it was just a trade-off. A burned tongue and a sore throat. The hot soup satisfies the former, but the latter complains.

I don’t know what to do with this mix of a situation. It felt like life seemed to mock my attempts to find deeper meaning. I wanted to sit quietly with my thoughts, to explore grand ideas and find some truth, but my body had other plans.

I simply don't understand how my parents and grandparents can drink boiling hot tea with such ease. Gulping it down on a hot day like it's heavenly. They must have charred throats and tongues. Perhaps that's why, with time, the nerve endings of their mouth must have short circuited and its easier to gulp down the hardest of things because what is to be felt isn't felt at all. 

Then how do they make the most flavourful food on a daily basis. I don't know. All I am left with is more questions and this unforgettable sore throat and burnt tongue. I want to scrape my throat with a butter knife but of course, I wouldn't do it.  

It still hurts. The ice cream was a brief relief, a distraction. The pain persists, refusing to be ignored. It sucks, plain and simple. Hopefully, it gets better with time. Until then, I'm stuck with this annoying, uncomfortable reminder of how easily things can go wrong.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Chase to Curfew.

My heart is out of my chest. It's in my throat, beating like it's struggling to stay alive. But it's more alive than ever. The curfew is at 7 PM. You know it, I know it. Everyone knows it. Especially the duos that linger at Martin Junction. Yet we all love to tease the limits of how far a body can run and make it in time. The urgency, the need, the frustration, the fulfillment. There’s something exhilarating about skirting the edge of danger. About feeling the adrenaline course through your veins as the clock ticks down. I reach out for it during exams, actively working towards it—to be sleep-deprived and see how far I can push myself and still dish out something legible. I always take that one fake quote in stride, "Edison built the electric bulb in a night," or something of that sort. It's fake for multiple reasons, the stealing allegations aside. But it brings me hope. And this hope is quite delusional when it’s not accompanied by action. You can call it pr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ominous Positivity: Reflecting on Korea Day

It's inevitable. The poetry and prose can only shield me from vulnerability for so long. Someone is bound to read through the poorly written literary devices and figure out the true meaning of all my works that I run away from by writing it (How presumptuous). Or no one cares.  The latter is the greater possibility. I find comfort in it, no one cares. And on some days, it's despair in how no one cares.  True to my character, I am going to switch the topic to another one. For today, I wish to reminisce on Korea Day and as much as I would love to say it started with me speaking Korean and having a wonderful day. It didn't. I sat on my glasses.  Having a power of -6 and allegedly even more, I can't move around without my glasses as there is a possibility I will fall into a ditch, the depth perception does lessen when you can't perceive objects, it turns out.  It was frustrating, the whole sitting on glasses debacle. I had never done it before. Out of character as I wou...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rainy Reflections.

What do I write today? I pondered for hours while doing mundane tasks. The sunlight stayed with me for a while, then it left, all alone, before the tube of electricity joined my thoughts. "Aren't you eating dinner?" asked my roommate. That's when I finally broke the silence I had condemned myself to until I wrote. I ate dinner and drank tea instead of coffee because I wanted to sleep earlier. I came back to my room, determined to write the third blog post. I couldn't give up so soon, could I? The sounds of doors and windows slamming against the walls, screeching laughter, and people running around seeped into my room. "It's cool outside, the rain, it's raining," said my roommate. I am not a huge fan of the rain. It always made me moody. I wasn't a hater either. Something in me whispered back to my roommate, "It's raining? It's raining!" I jumped up barefoot and ran out to feel the cool breeze against my face. My feet felt th...
Post a Comment
Read more