Read the winning essay in the 2025 Landfall Young Writers' Essay Competition

The Spinoff

6 days ago

Ava Reid's essay titled 'Two and a half mealworms'.
Upstairs, past the naked lady poster, I became aware of their traces. A tiger stared at me from a decorative fan pinned to the wall. An e-scooter helmet sat next to a broken clothes rack. There were eight oil column heaters, four stained couches, two worse armchairs, and one blue cock ring hanging neatly on the window latch. This was my first impression of my new flat. I never met the previous tenants, and we threw out most of their things, but I still think of them sometimes. I can picture them drinking on the deck, throwing food at the walls, doing what proper breathers do. I know that they slept here, and had sex here. I'm sure they were cold.
The term 'material culture' is frequently used in archaeology to refer to artefacts made before the Industrial Revolution, but it can also describe the objects in our lives today. The things we leave behind carry meaning, and we are drawn to explain them. I started thinking about the traces while I was at work. People leave a lot of rubbish in cafés, between their coffee cups and crumpled serviettes, like tātarakihi shedding their skins. Commonly, there are receipts, plastic bottles, maps, sunglasses. I come across them when clearing tables and try to remember who they belonged to. Or I make it up. A hastily scribbled note reading 'Bargain Chemist nasal spray, Bora Bora' can feel like a love letter when I stuff it in my pocket. I make lists. Group items. Spend my shift trying to figure out who forgot $91.97 of vitamin C and Voltaren purchased from Chemist Warehouse. Maybe an old man off a cruise ship — Ovation of the Seas or Celebrity Edge. He would have had little square glasses, a fleece vest and a limp. I worry about his joints.
Sometimes I find strange things. I'm not sure the customers realise my mind can extend beyond hospitality. Two and a half mealworms are left on a highchair, nestled between chewed bits of curly fries. I feel obliged to ignore them. But instead, I take photos and show all my coworkers, then research whether babies can eat bugs. It's socially acceptable to clear the table, but thinking beyond that gets weird. I cross into an unrecognised grey area, the interstice between normal and invasive, public and private — if you have ever looked in a stranger's trolley at the supermarket, you know what I mean.
Once, a nameless diary was left in the bathroom, and while trying to find a phone number to return it, I saw a scheduled abortion. It didn't matter that it was an accident. Not everything can be looked at and thought about. Where is the line?
The beach by my old house was once a settler rubbish dump. Amongst the driftwood and seaweed are bricks, shards of patterned chinaware and glass bottles. I used to trudge down to the water in my gumboots. When I wanted a change from looking for crabs, I'd dig through the mud and rinse things clean in the sea. Everything was special. I never felt like I was prying.
Middens across Aotearoa help us to understand the past. They guide the construction of narratives about our ancestors' lifestyles. Te Pokohiwi-o-Kupe is one of the earliest Māori archaeological sites in Aotearoa, with exceptionally varied midden pits. The material culture includes shellfish, bird and dog bones, and fragments of moa eggs. Things left at this site reveal lavish resource-rich lives and extensive communication networks. A tool made from the spiralling shell of an exotic sea snail was discovered here, linking the narrative back to our tūpuna in Hawaiki. Storytelling is integral to knowing who we are.
Middens are like burst black rubbish bags, pecked open by tarāpunga on the side of the road. Weaving between sun-baked Indomie packets, avocado seeds and rotting meat, I look at the houses behind the debris. I am a timeblind archaeologist stuck in the moment. I want to put a face to it. I am nosy. Do archaeologists worry about the future when the dynamic has flipped and someone is meticulously cleaning dirt off their rubbish with a tiny brush? 'No wonder the female from burial #3 had a protein-deficient diet. Her associated midden was weakkk.' What about when the proof of their existence is numbered and photographed, with a ruler for scale? I think they would be more upset if I rummaged through their recycling bin.
Time has socially cleansed the archaeological traces of our ancestors. You can look at ancient rubbish for as long as you want! Theorise it to death. You're not being rude, but inquisitive; a good student. What traces will remain of us, and what stories will they inspire? Yesterday, I walked past a gender reveal in the Botanic Gardens. It was proper, like you have seen a hundred times on Instagram, with a 'BABY' sign, balloon pop and lots of teary cheering. Perhaps our descendants will discover a stratum of pink confetti, optimistic microplastics characteristic of the 21st century. They will dissect our rituals and overemphasise the mundane. We won't be able to do anything about it.
Three cat-shaped bottles of 'Katy Perry Meow!' eau de parfum watch over the bathroom in my flat now, with glistening lilac diamante eyes. Somebody living on Hyde Street in 2024 liked this enough to buy it three times before abandoning it in the gutter. I think that says a lot about them, but maybe I shouldn't be so judgemental. After all, I picked up the cats and brought them home. Material culture rains off us like dandruff. Detritus forms small, unknown intimacies — from the people who leave things behind to those who find them. I should leave the perfume bottles for the next tenants so they can wonder about the lingering aroma of 'soft sexuality' and 'sensual spirit'. We glimpse another life and can't help but inflate it, dream it up: the boys, the bugs, the cats.