Discard

I try to use my sourdough starter discard to make bread, pancakes or waffles. I can't bear to throw it away.

This morning I was thinking of all the people from my childhood who discarded their noses and got new ones. Claudia, David, Sandra, Margaret, and Ann.

Then I imagined a tree with all of the discarded noses hanging like pears in an orchard.

People could come and harvest them, take them home and hang them up on their walls.

After all, abandoned noses need homes too.

Then the village surgeon had an idea.

He filled the trees with unwanted parts; cleft chins, dimples, hands, eyes, ears, whole heads, scalps with hair, legs, veins, necks, mouths, earlobes, skin, all of the parts that people disliked about themselves were there, brains, intestines, knees, wrists, backs, thighs and elbows all hung on those little metal Christmas tree ornament hooks and somehow they held.

People came from all over the world to pick out replacement body parts and discard unwanted ones.