The other ones would make fun if they could see me.  My top rim is crimped and stained with lipstick.  The bottom is dented and misshapen from trips through the Keurig which is just a tad too small. 

I was intended to be a single use with retirement then imminent.  This chick has poured at least ten cups of coffee into me.  I feel so used.  And dirty.

But yet.

I should be in a landfill somewhere making conversation with pods, coffee filters, and wadded-up paper towels – all of my single-use kindred – but here I am with some sort of demented environmentalist who assuages her guilt at using me, by using and using and using me.  She’s a demon.

She says she likes the way I fit into her hand.  Hell’s bells.  I’m just a 20 oz foam coffee cup.  Made for take-out and advertising – Waffle House in cheerful black letters on yellow squares.    The slogan is “America’s Place to Work” – when did I become a help wanted ad?  I’m not suited for such.  Who digs through the trash looking for tips on places to work?  Is that the sort of person they want?

I hope not.  I liked Theresa and Tony.  I watched them from my place in the tower of cups next to the Bunn coffee machine.  They were fun.  Easy banter back and forth.  Theresa giggled a lot.  Tony looked at her at every opportunity.  I wondered if they were having a thing.  I knew my time was getting closer as my vantage point got closer and closer to being at the top of the tower of cups. 

And then I was next.  I could feel the breeze from the air vent on my nether region.

I heard her say, “Oh, and a large coffee to go, please.”  With that I was pried off of my neighbor and filled with the steaming hot substance that keeps them going.  A lid smartly slapped on.  She carried me to the car and then she carried me into her home. 

I was sipped until emptied and expected to find myself in a waste can, but no.  Next thing I know, I’m being mashed into a too short Keurig and am filled with more coffee.  It hurts my rim when she does that.  Not to mention my bottom.  She may be saving me from the landfill, but must she torture me in the process?

From my point of view, the landfill is not so bad once you get there.  The journey through waste receptacles, garbage trucks and that frightening dump from high in the sky is traumatic, but no more traumatic than your average human death. 

Time in the landfill, the recycled ones say, is sort of like retirement.  You just sit around shooting the shit and playing silly games.  Not so bad.

Not so bad here, either.  I’ve got a new group of friends here on her desk.  The stapler, I’ve never met one you know.  As long as he keeps his sharp points to himself, we’ll be friends.  The tape.  The pen.  I understand that at some coffee shops the waitress writes names on the cups.  I think I would like to have a name and not just be part of a lot number.  The pen and I are brainstorming on how to make that so. 

She often names some of her belongings.  I daydream that I’m special enough for a name, but refills go by and nothing.  I am trying to be content with my lot in life wondering how many more times she will use me.  She’s an addict.  I wonder who she will replace me with.  Will they have a name. Mortimer, maybe? I could be a Mortimer.