Wrapper

She handed him a paper wrapper. He looked down at his right hand. The wrapper was from a candy bar from some country he had never heard of. The writing looked like it was from another planet. Not even the letters looked familiar. He wondered how these words could possibly be sounds from a person, sounds that make any kind of sense. The wrapper was white and the letters green. The ingredient list terrified him written in a foreign tongue, it always scared him in his own language because he never knew what any of it was, not really, and this is what he was putting into his body. But to not even have the comfort of language made it even more removed from his reality.

Something that looked like chocolate was smeared on the inside of the wrapper. He raised it to his nose, it smelled like chocolate too, but without the word he just didn’t trust it. A country that speaks with words that look like that might be trying to poison its own population. And how better than with chocolate, he thought. There was something about the colors too, something he didn’t trust. They didn’t say, “Open me, there’s a tasty treat waiting for you inside.” No, he decided, instead there was something stern and menacing about them.

He used to pack his own treats with his luggage when he traveled, never trusting the sweets abroad. He thought he was so smart. Till once, when he got off the plain and got to his room, opened his bag and saw that a bunch of the bars he had so cleverly brought along had melted all over his socks, underwear, and toothbrush. After that he felt he could just wait until he was home to enjoy a chocolate.

He started looking around the room for a place he could throw the wrapper way. All the people and the furniture and various other nick-knacks and personal commodities of whoever owned the apartment made it difficult to see anything that looked like a legitimate trash can. Every time he spotted something that looked like one he over heard some one talking about what a brilliant piece it was and how the young artist was a genius. And yes, once he learned that it wasn’t a trash can he could see the artistic brilliance. He then wondered if he threw the wrapper into it if the party guests would think it was just another brilliant statement by a genius. He thought maybe, if for no other reason than because the language and stark color scheme of the wrapper.

He was about to drop the wrapper in when the woman who gave it to him to hold walked up behind him and asked for it back. He asked her why she wanted back something that was trash. She explained that it was the trash of someone who was genius, whose work was brilliant. He looked back down at it again. To him it just looked like something you see blowing between your feet as you walk down the side walk on your way to wherever. He handed it back to her and told her that he hoped some day she too would be the trash of some genius, someone whose work is brilliant.