Sitting in My Kitchen Staring at the Trash Can

For today's poem, I followed the NaPoWriMo prompt to describe an object and then in the final line use an abstract idea that doesn't seem to relate to the object but actually does.

 

Sitting in My Kitchen Staring at the Trash Can
By Candace Shultz

Tall, dark, and ugly,
my trash can
sits in my kitchen
like an eye sore.
I can see it
sitting over there,
hugging my half wall
where it's left smudges
and scratch marks
in the white paint.

Its lid looks smug,
thinking it keeps
all the ugliness
out of sight,
out of mind,
but I can still smell
the rotting meat
from last night's dinner
and the sickly sweet
smell of a half-eaten banana
every time the lid
opens its mouth
in hunger for more.

The silver foot pedal is worn
and scratched in places,
constantly trodden on
by those who don't want
to touch the trash can
and its many germs
as they hurry to toss away
their unwanted garbage:
unwanted leftovers,
unwanted broken bits,
unwanted scraps of their lives
forever forgotten in the waste bin.

I have forgotten what it's like to dream.