XUGA Bucket Hat

They called me Rosa, after the colour, though I have faded to something closer to a sunset now. For most of my life I belonged to a hotel by the sea. There was lettering across me once, white and proud, the hotel’s name. You can still half-read it if you hold me up to the light. Every morning I was stacked by the pool, warm from the dryer, and handed to people who had travelled a long way to do nothing for a week. I liked that work. I was good at it.

Hotels retire their towels eventually, too thin and too rough for a paying guest. I expected the rag bin. Instead a box of us was given away, and a student went through it slowly, looking for the ones with stories still in them.

I am a bucket hat now. I still go out in the sun every day, and I still shade someone who has travelled somewhere to do very little. Not so different, in the end.