When I was born two months ago about 100 miles up Island from here, I vaguely remember the humming machinery and the people in crisp uniforms who brought me into this world.
There were so many others just like me in that birthing room, a precise process which started with resins. At one point it felt incredibly hot, then I was wet, much cooler and cut, achieving a singular identity. They nicknamed me Poly. Two weeks later I wound up in the back of a truck headed east and it was in that dark compartment that I caught my first, delightful whiff of provolone.
I arrived at a bustling store and a customer carried me out to a picnic table where her nice family ate a meal but forgot to take me with them. Then the other day it got so windy that a 60 mile per hour gust swept me away where I landed in this tree pictured above. I've been stuck here for days. I badly wanted to be used more than once but that doesn't look likely. Now I fear that a bird will mistake me for food and I'll wind up in its stomach. This comes at a delicate time for our kind since a few villages here have banned us.
The fellow helping me write this says he has politely declined stores' offers to take us if not needed. A dozen of us have been spared by this approach in just the last two weeks. If you want to email him with how many of us you save each month, he'll share that count.
If somebody does pull me down from this tree and I wind up in a landfill, I could still live for a long, long time. But I'd prefer to be recycled and try this again, hopefully with better results next time.
