The Trash Can of Putrid Things

The Trash Can of Putrid Things

The trash can is crawling with maggots.
The smell makes me wish to vomit
Up my stomach.

I suppose something disgusting lays inside.
Something involving putrid and bloody and slimy death
Of some animal.

Or perhaps it’s just mold climbing the walls of the trash can.
Produced by a combination of rotten, repugnant, and rancid foods.

Either way, the maggots sure were satisfied with it.
At least fifty of them were festering along the long dark walls of the trash can
With their pearly white bodies.
Their heads lift so as to drag themselves a small amount further into the trash can.

I come home and they’re gone.
The trash was picked up today.
I feel sorrow for whoever had to pick the trash can up with their own hands, trying not to
Touch it and put it in the trash truck.

I wonder, however, is for the couple of hours those maggots were in the trash can,
If they had the time to do their own metamorphosis.
If they could change all the way from a revolting decomposer
To a nauseating fly; a nuisance.

But isn’t it, in a way, beautiful that it can change that way?