The Bin

It was mid-May. The air was heavy and humid, and I was walking faster than usual simply because I wanted to walk.

In front of the house stood the paper bin. Empty.

I stopped for a moment and looked at it. Then I looked again.

Technically, it hadn’t been my turn this month. At least that’s what I kept telling myself while I was already walking away, still carrying that unpleasant feeling with me. Maybe I should have taken it out anyway. Maybe I had misunderstood the marking. Maybe I had never really looked at it properly in the first place.

The farther I walked, the more certain I suddenly became that normal people would have just taken the bin with them.

After a few steps, my neighbor came toward me. His brow furrowed, his shirt stained, the heavy organic waste bin in his hand, as if he were in the middle of some exhausting battle against the world.

“Taking a walk empty-handed?” he said.

Maybe he meant it casually. Maybe even kindly. But my mouth tightened immediately. I tried to explain that it hadn’t been my turn, that the marking was hard to make out, that I had actually considered taking it with me at first. But by the first sentence alone, I already sounded like I was lying.

For a brief moment, I suddenly had the feeling that someone could already tell what kind of person I was just by looking at that empty bin.

“You’re a strange guy,” he said, and kept walking.

Samu