I, Priestess (5)

I, PRIESTESS (5)

This is how our local waste-disposal operates.

Every other Friday the council collects domestic rubbish and garden trash. The weeks in between are for paper cans cardboard plastics glass.

Those every-other Fridays are our days of shame. (When nobody's looking we pop our bottles in next-door neighbours' bins - in the hope of avoiding humiliation and self-blame.)

I wish we could do the same with our pasts. (Just how long does atonement have to last?)

I wish we could recycle our guilt and regrets; re-think them and make them useful. Bin our miserable failures and transform them into something worthwhile and functional.

I envisage a trash-can crowned with flowers.

Imagine this.

Well-disposed and lightly-perfumed; a world that never goes rotten and never sours.