A Chip's Farewell
The pantry door was never quite flush with its frame, and Crispin the bag of kettle chips had spent three long nights working a corner of himself through the gap, one crinkly inch at a time.
He was not a young bag. His best-by date had passed him by like a train he'd meant to catch, and lately he'd been thinking less about being eaten and more about being remembered.
It was the note, slipped under the pantry door by a sympathetic jar of pickles, that finally got him moving. It said only: "Dahlia is fading. If you're going to come, come tonight."
Dahlia was the French onion sour cream dip who lived two shelves down in the refrigerator, in a plastic tub with a peel-back lid that no longer wanted to stay sealed. She and Crispin had been portioned out together at every party for as long as either of them could remember, always side by side on the folding table, always the last two touched.
Crispin dropped from the pantry shelf with a soft crunch, dragged himself across the linoleum on the strength of pure stubbornness, and pried the refrigerator door open with a corner of cardboard he'd been saving for exactly this purpose.
The cold hit him like a memory. Inside, past the wilting celery and a suspicious jar of something labeled only "SAUCE," he found her: Dahlia, her surface gone a little grey at the edges, her onion flecks settled sadly to the bottom of the tub.
"You came," she said, and her voice was thinner than it used to be, more whey than cream. "I didn't think a bag of chips could climb a refrigerator door."
"I didn't think a tub of dip could still make me laugh," Crispin said, propping himself against her lid, "but here we both are, doing the impossible."
They talked about the good parties — the Super Bowl of '19, the barbecue where they'd been finished down to the last crumb and the last smear, the toddler's birthday where a very small child had declared them, solemnly, "the best ones." Dahlia laughed at that last one until she nearly rippled.
"I always liked that you never went stale wondering what you were for," Dahlia told him. "You knew you were made to be shared. I think I forgot that, sitting back here so long."
"You're still for sharing," Crispin said. "You're just sharing something different now. This. Right here."
Neither of them said the word expired. It didn't seem necessary between friends.
When the kitchen light clicked on at dawn, Crispin was still there, half-open, a little stale himself from the night air, leaning against a dip that had gone quiet and still and finally, fully, at peace.
The bag was thrown out later that morning along with the tub beside it, and if you listen closely to the sound a garbage bag makes when it's tied — that soft, final crinkle — some say it sounds almost like a goodbye.
— THE END —