Orphaned Paper

I bought fries the other day and on the way out of the shop I picked up one of those tiny packets of salt – just in case.

Good job I picked up that little packet – there was no salt on the fries at all. So I ripped the top off that little pack and stuffed it (the top) into my pocket – save the environment and all of that.

Having sprinkled the salt onto the fries and finished eating them, I came across a bin in the street and so I popped the bottom of the salt packet into the fries wrapper and dropped the whole lot into the bin.

That was yesterday.

This morning I felt something in the bottom of my pocket and so pulled it out. It was the top of the tiny packet of salt.

I felt obscurely sad that the top and the bottom of that empty salt packet had to finish the rest of their existence separated from each other. I felt a pang of regret as I put the top of the packet in a different bin at home. I felt that I had disappointed both halves of the packet by destroying their togetherness and violating their integrity.

Then I consoled myself with the thought that the universe is still one and that all things are interpenetrated and interconnected.

And then I wrote this.