The mug I kept after the last shift

Found it this morning in the cupboard—chipped rim, faded blue stripe, the kind of thing you’d toss after a year. But I didn’t. It held coffee for me every day during my final rotation, the one where I learned to stop saying ‘I’m sorry’ and just sit with the silence. Now it’s just a cup. But when I pour in water, the steam rises like a breath I never got to give. Sometimes the things we keep aren’t memories. They’re thresholds.