He did not ask to be knotted shut —
his breath still fogs the dark interior,
his eyes still search the red horizon
through layers he cannot name or tear.

Someone decided he was overflow, too heavy for the shelves of worth, too worn for any window’s display — so they folded him carefully in, gathered the excess of his whole living, and tied it neat with a delicate bow, as though disposal could be made gentle with the right kind of ribbon.

The red world blazes on outside.
Markets hum. Hands find other hands.
No one pauses at the curb to ask
what the bag is quietly thinking,
whether the face sealed within
still recalls the particular taste of open air.

But look — he has not dissolved. His jaw holds its architecture. His gaze does not buckle inward. Even bound, even discarded, even swollen with the full weight of every word left unspoken — he watches.

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And there is something that unsettles about a face that watches from inside a trash bag: it means someone placed it there. It means someone looked — and chose.

We walk past our own wreckage
and call it an ordinary Thursday.
We knot our silences with ribbon
and set them neatly at the curb,
then return inside to wash our hands.

Yet the morning always comes.
The light finds every bag, every corner,
every shape the darkness tries to keep.

And some faces, pressed hard against the black, refuse the mercy of invisibility — refuse to become the quiet, forgotten thing we discarded one forgettable afternoon and convinced ourselves we never called alive.

— Originally inspired by a piece of digital art: a human face sealed inside a black trash bag, set against a burning red world.