R.I.P.

Who is to say that the chapstick I found on the sidewalk that looks just like a chapstick I own, was the same chapstick? Maybe a petri dish DNA test result in a lab, but not I. Not I. Yet, I picked you up - went so far as to remove your tiny cap - but when I stared at the smooth balm with the inevitably grey-tinged center clump, I wasn't so certain you unknowingly dropped from my pocket minutes earlier as I walked by. It is the age old question that asks if a tree falling in a forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it? When (IF) you fell from my person, you did not cry out, thus sealing your fate as an unidentifiable outcast. In all honesty, I'd be more willing to press my lips to that tree than your plastic tube. If you are indeed the very same chapstick I once carried around, please forgive me for first dropping you on the sidewalk, for second not realizing you were missing, for third not being able to tell you apart from any other candy cane chapstick that isn't found in the ordinary habitat of my car cupholder or bottom of backpack crumbs or winter coat pocket or please-no-omg the dryer (away from those places, you become anonymous) and for forth making me cringe just looking at you. So you reach the fate of all chapsticks adrift: the trashcan burial. And for that, the fifth forgiveness.