Trash

This evening as I went back to my room, a sound behind my house caught my attention. I looked out my windows to see what it was. I expected to see the pack of stray dogs that frequent the trash pit (which is also just behind my house). Instead I saw two teenage boys, running, backs bent, heads nervously turned in my direction.

The one boy had in his hand a white trash bag. I knew it was mine because when I threw it out earlier this afternoon, there were no other bags in the pit. I watched as they carried my trash to the back wall, then dumped its contents on the ground.

As saw them sorting through the trash with their eyes, I felt like they were sorting through me. Guiltily I wondered, what had I thrown away that week? An empty milk box, rotten salad, a couple of mango pits.

I was ashamed by the amount of food that had rotted in my fridge before making it into anyone's stomach. Would these boys take some of that food? Maybe I shouldn't have thrown that out yet. But soon they too had determined that my trash really was trash. Then they hopped back over the fence leaving my trash on the ground by the back wall.

The whole episode took less than a minute, but I can't stop thinking about those two boys. Why did they dig through my trash? What did they hope to find? How often do they sneak into the trash pit?