At the Dumpster behind the Drive-Thru
My shift ends, so I walk outside and
there’s trash to take out, so I bring it with me, and
I know the bag is full of milk jugs, and cups and straws, and
I know because I helped put them there and
it’s like a single-use plastic reunion that I’m now holding in my hand.
I think about this as I open the dumpster, and
sling the bag up high, and
hear the lid close with a bang. But when I turn
to walk back across the parking lot, things slow.
Light is bouncing and reflecting off of bright, glittering snow, and
I can hear a bird singing over the sound of gentle traffic, and
see cracked asphalt peeking out from under many layers of white ice.
My ear is still throbbing from where the headset pinched it.
My pants are still stained from where I spilled someone’s drink. And
here is the world, shining,
and I know for a fact that those cups will still be around after I die.
They will experience more time on this earth than I will, and
mounds of them will pile up in great heaps, and
another car pulls into the drive-thru and
I watch as its window rolls down.
Maybe somewhere out there is an ant crawling on a landfill. Maybe,
just like me,
it is feeling the sun upon its face,
and,
I wonder if it notices a breeze blow past its antenna,
the same way a gust of wind ruffles my hair.
I hope so. I need to believe so. And
I need to believe that even the actions of the ant,
small as it may be, similar to me as it may be,
have a place in this life. And
so sometimes I take home the empty cardboard boxes,
the ones the oat milk comes in,
and I recycle them myself because
there’s only the one dumpster at work, and
it doesn’t really change anything, and
I know that, and
still I just keep on thinking that somewhere out there
is an ant,
just like me.
Lucy Thomson tied for second place in the Charles Crupi Memorial Poetry Contest for Michigan High School Students. She is a student at International Academy – Okma.
