The windowsill is narrow. On that hand's width, a cup of black tea, cherries in a glass bowl, and a bunch of red lilies are set side by side. The teacup is thin porcelain with a floral pattern, and it comes with a saucer. The afternoon light slants in from outside the window and scatters across every angled face of the glass bowl.
Outside the window, parked cars and a playground slide blur. The focus is on the inside. The outside keeps moving, and the things on the windowsill have stayed still since someone carried them over one by one.
Setting a place like this takes time. Time to buy the flowers and put them in water, to wash the cherries and move them into the bowl, to boil water and pour it into the cup, to take out a saucer at that. It means there is someone who sets out a hand's width for herself even with the scraps left after a whole day has been spent.
The word care is usually used only when it points toward someone else. But a person who spends all day feeding and washing and driving someone needs a hand's width of windowsill like this too. Many people still get through the day without even that much.
The light does not come straight down from above. It rises at a slant from somewhere low outside the window, grazes the side of the cup, passes behind the lily petals, and lays a thin red cast on the wood grain of the sill. At that angle, the sun has dropped well down, around the time the day's work is mostly done.
This hand's width was not prepared at the start of the day. The slant of the light shows plainly that it is a share barely kept back once all the tasks were cleared away.
Beside the teacup, a single cherry sits outside the bowl on the sill. Someone picked one up and ate it, and will be back soon. Looking at the photo again, it is about the time when steam would still be rising from the cup.
