Sometimes when I'm feeling lazy, or if garbage day is only a couple of days away, I won't empty the garbage can in the bathroom. I'll just add to the pile and hope it doesn't topple. Kleenexes stuck together with dried mucus, Q-tips yellowed with ear wax or blackened with smudged mascara, eyeliner shavings, pink pantiliner wrappers, strings of ragged dental floss, cotton pads like a painter's palette, red or blue or purple, wispy bird's nests of copper hair plucked from a brush, a flattened tube of Colgate Total fresh mint gel, used paper towels from wiping the toothpaste spots off the mirror. The evidence of life, an overflowing bathroom garbage can of dirty cotton.
