The Lid

I.m sitting at my kitchen table. Drinking coffee. But doing nothing in particular.
A plastic lid sits in front of me, i pick it up and my thumbnail finds a small bump in the middle. Tick tick tick as it clicks lightly over it, back and forth. This tiny bump. it wasn.t meant to be. No-one thought, let.s put a tiny bump in the middle of the lid. It.s just there, but it.s why the whole lid exists. Once a liquid plastic, red as blood, flowed through a tiny pin-prick of a hole filling a mould to create this lid. It was born in an instant, and then snapped out of the mould, leaving this tiny bump. The belly-button of the lid. No eyes, no ears, no mouth. Just a belly button and a lid.

My eyes glaze through it, it melts and in reflecting the light from the window the bump turns into a tiny droplet of water that.s just landed on still water, two small concentric ripples, frozen in time. The lid tilts slightly and the droplet becomes a vortex whisking up everything in it.s path. The glazing bars on my window are softly destroyed like a blender would the contrast in ingredients in a mixing bowl. But magically the glazing bars re-appear as the mixer passes by.

I was going to write about a recent kite-surf experience. There was adventure, adrenalin and battling with the elements, failure of the safety systems, and relief to be back in the bubble of contained living. But instead i put a lid on it. I contained what was not contained.

Somewhere in my kitchen is a container. Without a lid.

Inside are dry gravy granules. Dry and devoid of life. But add them to water and they come alive. I.m alive, screams the little granule. But no sooner is it alive than it is whisked in with the others, bubbled into a volcanic gravy inferno, and devoured by the great big gravy-eating monster.

The end