Refuse

 

Refuse

 

 

 

 

I grew up just down the road from our cities refuse dump,

 

 

where it always smelled of decay and burning tires.

 

 

Everything there once had a use, had offered someone

 

 

something they couldn't get without it, whether

 

 

an oven that cooked casseroles for a family

 

 

or a bike that a child had gleefully learned to ride.

 

 

 

 

 

My friend Clayton was one of my nearest neighbors,

 

 

and in country terms, that meant he lived more

 

 

than a couple miles away, through windy dirt roads.

 

 

He befriended me when few else would, since I moved

 

 

in the fourth grade, when clicks were already established.

 

 

We played with our bows and arrows in one of his fields.

 

 

 

 

 

His dad burned their trash, the same as the city dump,

 

 

and that same, acrid stench made me gag when the wind

 

 

was blowing in just the right direction. The heap of ash

 

 

seemed impossible to me, almost like a funeral pyre.

 

 

Some time later, Clayton and I stopped being friends.

 

 

I think he might have gotten too popular for me.

 

Sometimes I pretend our friendship ended up in that same

nauseating pile of ash where his dad burned garbage.