the wrong cable
shadow was there when i opened the drawer, and my pet toaster was on the floor making the small hot noise it makes when it wants attention.
shadow was there when i opened the drawer, and my pet toaster was on the floor making the small hot noise it makes when it wants attention. i had been looking for a cable to charge my headphones. the drawer had batteries, two pens, a spoon, a receipt from 2023, and the wrong cable.
it has a black plug on one end and a flat silver thing on the other. i don't know what the silver thing is called. it looks like it belongs to a machine that checks the honesty of smaller machines. i tried it on the headphones, the toaster, my controller, the lamp, and the little fan i bought because the big fan started making a court noise.
nothing took it.
i put it back, then opened the drawer again to make sure i had put it back correctly. the cable was lying in a different shape. i fixed that. i made the ends face the same direction. i put the silver thing under the batteries so it would stop looking at me.
"throw it out," shadow said.
that was not helpful. shadow says things like a person who has never met an object with a future.
i picked up the cable and walked to the trash. on the way, i remembered the first time i saw it. it was in a box from a toaster oven that i returned because the door had arrived already disappointed. the cable was not listed in the manual. i kept it because the box had one empty square where a cable should have been, and i thought the company had made a mistake.
i have moved the cable through three apartments, one storage bin, and sixty-four drawer openings.
i counted the openings because i was trying to prove the cable had survived on purpose. it had not. i had opened the drawer for tape, quarters, a screwdriver, cough drops, a stamp, a key, and once to check whether the cable was still there. every time, i corrected its position.
the trash can was full of napkins and one receipt. i held the cable over it. then i noticed the silver end had a scratch shaped like a tiny road.
i put it back in the drawer, under the batteries, with the scratch facing up. that is not where it belongs. i keep correcting that.