Tea Parties with Kurt Cobain

The click of the cassette echoes in my hands,
plastic shell fitting snug into the deck,
a gentle whirr, a faint magnetic hum.
I press play.

A soft crackle, a moment of nothing. Then,
the tape rolls forward, static turns to sound—
his voice, familiar and raw, unfurls in the room like smoke.

I pour the tea while he sings.

I was nine when I first poured tea for Kurt Cobain.

A chipped porcelain cup, a thimble-sized serving, the steam curling toward the ceiling of my small bedroom—a contradiction of my mother’s affinity for pink and my unauthorized decor. She covered me in ruffles and bows, but I tore the edges off my world, replacing her ballerina prints with rock posters and horror stills—The Crow, dark-eyed and brooding, watching over me like a patron saint.

Outside, the wind rattled the loose siding of our ranch-style house with its crumbling foundation. Inside, I sat on the floor, cross-legged, a porcelain pot between us.

Kurt mirrored me, flannel-clad and light as a shadow, his dirty-blonde hair falling into his face as he reached for the sugar bowl.

“You want one lump or two?” I asked, offering him the little ceramic dish my grandmother had given me before she stopped calling.

Kurt leaned forward, eyes soft, fingers tracing the rim of his teacup. “Dunno. What’s the right answer?”

I thought about this. No one ever asked me what was right before. I wasn’t sure how to answer.

“Two,” I decided. “Because that way, if it’s too sweet, you can just drink slower.”

He grinned, soft and lazy, the way a song lingers in the air after the last chord fades. “That makes sense.”

And so we drank.

The tea smelled like vanilla and burnt leaves, a mix of flavors my mom kept in a tin on the counter. It was warm against my palms, my fingers curled around the cup, the heat soaking into my skin.

Kurt took a sip, then made a face. “It’s not Pennyroyal, is it?”

I giggled. “No, silly.”

He smirked, pleased with himself, and set the cup down beside his knee.

I met Kurt the same way I met my imaginary friends—quietly, without ceremony.

I heard his voice before I knew his name, before I even knew what he looked like. It was raspy, raw, something pulled from the throat and left to dry in the sun.

By the time I saw his face, I was already devoted.

I built him a shrine, a shoebox altar tucked between my bed and the wall, where my mother wouldn’t find it. Inside, I placed treasures only a child would think to give a ghost: acorns, dead leaves, a guitar pick I stole from a kid at school who didn’t deserve it. Sometimes, I poured him tea. A little. Just enough.

And one night, he came.

“You’re sad,” I told him, stirring my tea with a tiny silver spoon.

Kurt watched the sugar dissolve into the dark. “Yeah,” he said, like he hadn’t considered it before. “I think I am.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

He smiled at that, not a happy smile, not a real one, but something smaller, something that knew it had no business being there but stayed anyway.

I was nine. I didn’t know words like martyr or tragedy. I only knew the way he sighed when he thought I wasn’t looking. The way he traced the cracks in the floor with his fingertips, the way he let me talk but never promised he was listening.

The way he never drank his tea.

Outside, my mother and father were fighting again.

Inside, I lifted the pot.

“More?” I asked.

Kurt hesitated, watching me, watching the way my hands shook when I steadied the cup.

“Not this time,” he said.

I frowned, setting the pot down. “Why not?”

He exhaled, pushing a hand through his hair. His fingers lingered at his temple, pressing, as if trying to hold something in place.

“I think,” he said slowly, “I’ve had enough.”

I didn’t know what he meant. Not then.

But later—years later, after the record stopped spinning, after the candles in my shoebox shrine burned to stubs—I would.

I never saw him again.

But sometimes, when I pass an open window on a quiet night, I hear the last notes of a song that no one is playing.

Sometimes, when I pour myself a cup of tea, I pour a little extra. Just enough.

For a ghost.

For a saint.

“I’m so happy, ‘cause today I’ve found my friends—they’re in my head.”-Nirvana