trash

I rifled through your trash and found
a bus ticket, soup can, a receipt for Boots, two empty bottles of wine, a blue scrap of plastic from an old phone case, a handful of wet spaghetti, a folded up pizza box, eighteen cotton buds, three milk bottles, five eggshells, four chicken bones, a banana peel, a door knocker, a broken mug, a ticket to a gig, an immigration form for Barbados, a plastic clothes hanger, a pair of black jeans ripped at the crotch, 35 tissues, a chewed up pen, a broken wine glass, two used condoms, 23 teabags and a piece of paper torn up so all I could read was swee_____yo_____up____late.

I like to imagine I know you now.

We’ve never met and I’ve never kissed your neck or held your hand or taken you out for spaghetti or knocked on your door or taken you on a trip or fucked you or asked you to a gig and we’ve never had a long talk over wine and woken up tangled up in warm sheets and I’ve never tiptoed downstairs to make you banana pancakes and served them in bed. You’ve never eaten them with your hands and smiled at me in the hazy light and run your fingers through my hair and stared a little too long into my eyes. You’ve never even passed me on the street and for a fleeting second thought about a casual greeting. I’ve never stolen your bike or stolen a kiss or stolen your breath or squeezed you like a vice or hit you in the face so you had to wear sunglasses all week. I’ve never shouted at you so hard I can’t speak. I’ve never called the cops on you or dropped you off a cliff or pushed you down the stairs or dragged you by your hair or run a bubble bath for you when you come home from a long day and given you a foot rub and made you feel like it’s all gonna be ok.

I just know the things you throw away.