Elegy for a Thousand Cups

 

Between ash and autumn’s breath,
a thousand cups sing quiet death.
Not from sorrow, nor regret—
but from the grace of being met.

I didn’t plan to find them. The cups were just there—hundreds, maybe thousands—piled in ash and leaf and silence. Some whole, some fractured. Some kissed by fire. Others still clean, as if waiting for a hand that would never return.

There’s a Japanese word—Wabi-Sabi—that gestures toward this feeling: the ache and beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Another, Mono no Aware, suggests a gentle sadness for the passing of all things.

These cups weren’t arranged for me. But in their disorder, they offered a ceremony of ruin. They held echoes. Not of tea, but of time.

The longer I looked, the more I realized:
I wasn’t mourning the objects.
I was mourning what they meant—once.

And that mourning was beautiful.

Wabi-Sabi Photowalk Prompt

Visit a forgotten place. Let the broken and worn rise into view.
Seek not to fix, but to feel.
Frame what is fading. Let beauty be cracked.