Bin Day

this morning i was made to wake up early to take the bins out. it’s a new house, new bins, new rules. bins on the street by 7AM, not overnight unless you want to feed the foxes. never feed the foxes. they’ll only come back. did you hear foxes are showing signs of domestication? a fox at the foot of the bed, can you imagine?

on the street with bin bags in hand i expected to meet a community of others all clutching a week’s waste. squints, nods, acceptance. this fell flat. no one but me and the leafy pavement. no bags to copy from. slippers splashing about in the deep end of entrenched laws that were not read to me. i hesitantly placed the bags by the tree where I chained my bike. then quickly move them to in front of the low, cracked wall at the end of the building entrance in case the men mistake my bike for rubbish. i love that bike; quiet, heavy, as fast as I want it to be. don’t love it enough to keep it inside, though. my neck cracks with the breeze. heard a bird and a car door and a plane. I’m never up this early. not for lack of want or trying, but each hopeful alarm is always met with the clear fact that i am still tired and am not yet ready to break out. and yet, i eventually do get up and remain tired. and it is also late. 

i sit in bed for an hour with a coffee and a laptop. i then go for a run. i get back with almost an hour spare before work, enough time for breakfast. i stopped eating breakfast a while back and can’t remember why, it used to be the best. i slice into, de-stone, and cross-hatch an avocado on a wooden board that isn’t mine and after eight years unforecasted, a cirrus cloud of Maggie quietly sails behind my eyes and sinks into the sockets. jangling tin on tin through my open window as my neighbour across the street drops their bag on the curb. i’ll need to move mine. the cloud passes with the day but her shadow holds out in the corners.

the run was quiet and cold and my footsteps found more space in the earth than usual. through the trees i slowly joined the charge of the eternal scream that keeps us all spinning round, that endless noise we try to tune out. from the first sound to now to the last. vibrating our bones. in time.  

that old woman and i on the same park loop. both stopping at the same moment and pointing to the same edge of the copse

a fox.