No Surrender

I work in a distribution center, a warehouse. The people who own the business are like gamblers. They bet they know what people are going to want to buy. It is speculative, and demanding. People are strange, and trying to guess what they want must be difficult. For the most part the customers are small businesses. From one coast the other, hoping they buy the things they can sell. In many ways the whole thing is built on faith, and luck.

The company where I work will buy something, hoping somebody else will buy it. Our customer will buy it hoping it will sell. Commerce at its most basic level, supply and desire.

Sometimes a customer will return an item to us. Our customers are retailers, mostly, not seasoned, trained, packing professionals. It makes for some very interesting choices to protect the contents of a box.

None more so than one recently. It was wrapped inside a shopping bag, one of the reusable, sturdy bags designed to reduce plastic. The bag held a wire basket, a flimsy wire ball, really. And, it was stuffed full of poetry.

Page after page of typed poetry. I'm not really qualified to judge the value of poetry. Is anybody? But, I couldn't bring myself to recycle it either.

I write a lot. One Facebook group I joined wants us to write 200 words a day. I can do that standing on my head. Most of it, maybe all of it, is not worth the time it takes to read. But, I couldn't wad it up and send it as chaff to strangers.

Somebody poured their soul onto these pages. Then wadded them up and packed an unwanted home decor item (I don't even remember what it was) in them and said goodbye. And as I read them I wonder why.

I hope whoever did that has not given up. It is the, I think, the only failure. In some ways those things really bother me. If a person walks away from a desire, a dream where does that road lead? I don't even like to think about it.

I am going to go find someplace that is looking for a story. Then I am going to write it and send it off. and no matter what they say I am going to write another. And any of my writing friends that feel like quitting, I won't let you. You have come too far, no matter how far you still have to go.