Consigned to Trash - May 29 2026

 

Consigned to Trash

May 29 2026

On the internet, all my missives

are labelled “Messages”.

Like the ones tacked up 

by the supermarket doors

thumb-tacked into cork.

Lost dog,

cat found,

kittens

looking for a home.

Local handyman

will clean gutters, cut grass. 

And anyone driving to Moose Jaw

(will happily split gas)?

Phone numbers on tear-off tabs.

Like shorthand,

saying what needs to be said

and nothing more.

Utilitarian messages

not real letters.

No formal salutation

or complimentary close.

Not even full sentences,

let alone

bad penmanship

or a cursive signature

with curlycues

and hearts dotting the i’s.

And for sure no brownish ring

from coffee sloshing over

a favourite mug.

Quick, clean

and unsentimental. 

Messages

never meant to be kept,

but rather, consigned to “Trash”

somewhere in the limbo

of the omniscient “Cloud”.

There will be no fading letters

on yellowing paper

in a loved one’s hand

for descendants to discover, decipher, and treasure;

forgotten

in a musty box

in the attic of the family home,

amidst the clutter

of stuff no one wants.

Instead, just a dead phone

with a cracked screen

without the secret code.

Or if the trove does get recovered,

all they will find

is dashed-off rubbish

and unsolicited junk,

disposable stuff

with an alphabet soup

of abbreviated words

and cute emojis

no one uses anymore.

Digital messages,

but nothing personal, or introspective.

No heartfelt connection

or secret thoughts.

No confession shared,

weakness exposed,

fear professed.

As worthless as the household trash

you cart to the curb

each garbage day,

where it gets magically deleted

by men in orange vests;

an empty bin

as if your waste never existed.

The dump, like the cloud

some notional place

no concern of yours.

I recently accidentally deleted all my emails (yikes!): in too much of a rush while trying to declutter my Inbox and Trash. I managed to recover them and then reorganize, which meant spending a lot of time staring at the app. 

I have a box I made for myself called “Letters”. This takes a special box, because it seems emails are presumed to be something less:  not even “electronic mail”, but rather just “Messages”. A utilitarian word that immediately evoked a cork message board. This thought was reinforced when I saw that most of the supposedly valuable emails I’d rescued were utterly disposable.

Perhaps correspondence with email is too easy. I think a little more friction would encourage more thoughtfulness and care. Real writing, not shorthand. Writing worth preserving. Personal letters, not just quick missives that can be as quickly dismissed. Can you imagine a modern equivalent to the letters from soldiers in Ken Burns’ Civil War? I think not.

“Trash” brings to mind the real stuff. I find it disturbing how, in our consumer society of abundance and waste, so-called garbage (a lot of it with lots of value left!) is so easily disposed of. There appear to be no consequences to promiscuous waste when each week like clockwork our trash is cleanly whisked from the curb and magically disappears.

So I guess it’s for the reader to decide if this poem is a lament for the lost art of letter writing, or an environmental screed against mindless consumerism. Can it be two things at once?!