Tea at Minus Three

At minus three the city runs on tea in plastic cups, sold from kiosks with the seriousness of a public utility. You pay a few hryvnia, you receive a small hot sun, and for one block your hands believe in the future again.

I drank mine at the mouth of an underpass, watching Khreshchatyk go about its winter, and understood the cup as infrastructure: the smallest node of the municipal warmth network, load-bearing between metro stations.

The photograph is of the cup, not the city. Some days the cup is the truer portrait.