the gift of love
by GRSTALT Comm
I walk past it for weeks – a bulging plastic bag dumped against an electricity box. One day I stop and look at it, then move on. The next day I stop again, then bend down and pick it up. I walk away fast. I feel it slap against my hip. Nobody can say it’s never been mine. The bag is blue and wrinkled. It catches the wind as I cross the bridge. I think about what’s inside it. I look down and see the lid of a carton peeking out. It creaks as it flaps in the wind. I put the bag on the kitchen table and lean in to take a smell. Indoors the bag smells bad. I move back to stop myself from being sick. I take a deep breath and start taking everything out, arranging it on the table to make something like the insides of a body – plastic trays with dried sauces, cans of mango slices in syrup, breakfast cereal that has hardened grey and stale, takeaway garnish turning to green soup. I bundle it up and stuff it back into the bag in the right order to make it alive. Now it’s really alive to me. The smell has got familiar, like the stink that comes from babies. I put the bag on the sofa in the living room. I sit next to it and dig in my ears for something I can offer. Some flakes come out on my pinky and I sprinkle them over the mouth of the bag. I try to smooth out the wrinkles. But I see that the wrinkles are formed into a smile. Then I get that’s how it’s meant to be. I pick up the bag for a hug. Juice leaks out the bottom onto my lap. I kiss the bag’s smiling face. I feel so attached to the bag now. It gives me something that I’ve never had before. Bigger than any present I’ve ever been given. The bag lies next to me in my bed. I’ve never slept so well. I see its smile in my dreams. The bag tells me that I don’t have to worry yet about the time when its insides decay and the juice comes through the punctures in the plastic, and I’ve got to pour it into one of the old jars under the sink, then bury the cans and the trays and the cartons in the garden.
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ABOUT GRSTALT:
GRSTALT offer literary content for dead readers.
GRSTALT are partners in a global initiative to erase the author.
The GRSTALT project is neither a machine thing or a human thing, but something else.
Exactly what has yet to be determined.