The Teabag

The first time I saw the tea bag, I barely noticed it was there. It was morning, I'd parked at the high school and was walking through the tunnel to the station. I was rushing, of course, and I figured it was there because someone else had been rushing, too. I paid it little mind.

But the tea bag was there in the afternoon when I walked back to my car. Nothing had disturbed it. No animal had burrowed in it to see what was inside. No one had kicked it into the grass. It looked as clean and untouched at 6 p.m. as it had at 7 a.m.

So I thought more about it. Did it fall out of a box of teabags? Was it perched on top of a cup, its owner unaware until reaching the office that his hot water would never become tea?

The next morning, I decided that if the teabag was still there, I'd snap a shot of it. And so I did. Not because it was anything special. But because it was not.