"Be sure to shake it!" the bubble tea barista tells me but I don't. I won't. Why would I? "It mixes the sugar" maybe you want that. Maybe YOU do. To be drinking some homogenous concoction. Uniformly distributed. Each sip the same as the last. Just as sweet. Just as sweet. Just as sweet. All pointless flat indulgence. No personality. No humanity. A time-loop of your own devising, bereft of experience, sanitized of risk.

I want my first sip to be teeth-curdlingly sweet. I want the next to be horribly disappointing. I want to hunt. I want to jab my straw into pockets of substance like my ancestors stirring twigs into a bug colony. I want to raise the straw to different depths and feel something. The ocean is so far but I know what it means to rise from its syrupy dark depths into the still waters above.

I want all boba. I want no boba. I want to scoop the bubbles with my straw when the ice-rocks have been washed dry by the tide. "Be sure to shake it." Never. I want to experience every human emotion in this cup of tea. I am not a coward. I am not a sheep. My tea is still enough for pond-skaters to glide. It will not shake. Live your repetitive nothing. Live in fear of the unknown. Live your fear of change. I am choking on a boba.