Litter

The receipt I dropped last night, perhaps I pretend I did not see it fly away in the breeze as I took my keys from my back pocket, perhaps I pretend I do not hear the rustling noise it makes as it travels across the parking lot taunting me as a I walk to my car, “litterer, litterer.” Perhaps I am afraid that someone has seen me drop this receipt and will report me to the authorities after which I will receive a letter in the mail informing me of a fine for littering, and so I pick it up. Or perhaps I think, I’ve done enough for this world, it can take one indisposed receipt. Or maybe I don’t pick it up and maybe the fear of getting a fine for civil disservice haunts me and my dreams that night. Or maybe I sleep peacefully and dream of pastel rollerblades.

Perhaps the receipt tumbles onwards towards unsuspecting pedestrians. Perhaps one of the pedestrians is you and you pick up the receipt, shaking your head in disdain towards the person who initially dropped the receipt and throw it away into the nearest trash can. You then later rant about the carelessness of people to your friend and how it’s people like me who make the world so dirty and cause the lack of awareness for our earth. Perhaps you would even go so far as to say that the world would be a better place without the person who dropped the receipt and who allowed it to scatter into the wind. Maybe you saying this startles the friend that you walk with. Maybe your friend stops as they are walking and looks at you differently, in a state of realization. Maybe the word, “what,” abandons your lips. Perhaps they say nothing, but after this interaction, take longer to reply each time that they text you back. Perhaps you do not hang out with them ever again, but every time you see their name pop up on social media, you think about receipts.

Perhaps the receipt gets stuck to a piece of recently dropped gum and gets stepped on by an unsuspecting shoe, protecting it from the clinging nature of the substance. Maybe it is then driven over again and again and torn to shreds from the place it and the gum had been forsaken.

Maybe the receipt continues to drift away from the place it was dropped. Rustling down the street blown by the wind that plagues this flat place. Maybe it wakes up the neighborhood rat from the crack in the wall of the sushi place and he pokes his head out only to be startled by a car rushing down the street and ducks his whiskers back into his hole. But maybe he skitters out a few moments later, recovered from his initial shock and taps past the receipt where it has gotten stuck on a stick that rests on the sidewalk towards a bit of bread that has been deposited by a student frequenting the nearby sub shop. Perhaps the rat chews on the receipt, taking the ad at the end, but leaving the order of fries, and takes the piece back to his hole in the wall to add to his winter clippings that insulate his little abode.

Perhaps another gust of wind comes, as it does, and maybe the receipt is dislodged from the place it got stuck on the stick. Perhaps it continues its journey towards and into the road only to get yet again stuck on the underneath of a moving vehicle heading south. Maybe the receipt gets stuck on this vehicle all the way to San Antonio and is deposited to the ground where it lies until it rains a bit and gets disintegrated and washed into the drainage system of the city.

We’ll never know whether the receipt is properly disposed of or whether it becomes the tipping point of a friendship, whether it protects a shoe, whether it warms a rat, or whether it finds its way to a southern city. But perhaps I never dropped it.