grammy's slippers.

written sporadically on june 28, 2023

crazy concept: trash is trash. that's what it is and that's all it is and all of it stinks.

but there they were, sitting on top of all the other trash in the trash bin: grandma's slippers. size four... probably (she was a very small woman. her daughter called her "munchkin.") anyways, her slippers were cheap. barely any hints of wear or heel indents or toe outlines. maybe the munchkin wasn't heavy enough to cause any (i cannot emphasize more how truly tiny she was.) anyways again...they had stripes of gray and white too. perfectly clean even while sitting on a bed of freshly steeped tea bags, dead condolence flowers and day old rice. she probably didn't care about those slippers very much. she always brought her own nicer, thicker, sturdier, fuzzier, warmer pairs anyways. these were her back-ups for her back-ups in her vacation home; third-stringers.

for some reason, i thought about pulling them out of the trash and throwing them back in the mud room. i don't know why. i never really cared too much about those slippers before either. nobody could even fit into them except for her. if i kept them, they'd keep doing what they'd been doing: taking up space in the corner of the mud room. they could be doing the same thing in a landfill or compactor or wherever it is the trash of mecklenburg county goes. and there they'll finally have indents and signs of wear and maybe the ants or raccoons or rats will make a bed of them. they've gotta be twin-sized slippers at least for the common rat and who am i to deny the strange wild of comfort? "you can't take your least favorite pair of slippers with you when you die," i think the saying goes.

so i left them in the trash where they belonged. the slippers were trash after all and i doubt i'll miss them very much.

peacefully, grammy passed on june 3rd. a daughter of japan. a devoted mother and grandmother. "sumie was a homemaker," her obituary said. gone at 91 and gone in a flash. "ain't that somethin'," uttered somewhere in east tennessee. "i'll miss her too," someone told me.

i took the trash to the street last night and she's been wandering the universe for 25 days now. the time flew. june is gone. trash day's today. and all of it stinks.