I’m a plate. Perfectly round, perfectly white, and I’ve spent my whole life at the very bottom of the stack.
Nine plates sit on top of me. All of them, resting right on my back.
“Heavy. So heavy,” I complained every single day. “Why am I always the one on the bottom?”
“Well, that’s because you’re the sturdiest,” the plate just above me would say. “Someone strong has to hold up the bottom. It’s an honor.”
“I don’t want honor. I want to be used.”
In the kitchen, plates get taken from the top of the stack. So the one that always gets used is whichever plate happens to be on top. It gets loaded with something warm, gets called “such a lovely plate,” and goes right back up when it’s done.
Me? I’ve never once had food on me.
“Just you wait. One of these days, I’m getting to the top.” “Sure, sure.” “And then I’ll get piled high with food, and everyone will tell me how wonderful I am.” “Sure, sure. Until then, just sit tight down there.”
Then one day, we got packed into a dark crate. It rattled and roared for a long, long time, and then—thud—everything went quiet.
The lid opened.
And the nine plates above me drifted upward. Just like that.
I drifted too.
“I’m floating! I’m floating! I finally made it to the top!” I cheered, sailing right past all nine of them. “Look at this! This is what the top looks like! How do you like that!”
But something was off. I thought I’d reached the top, and yet there was still more “up” above me. Up, down—none of it meant anything anymore. All I could do was spin in place.
Outside the window, stars glittered. This, it seemed, was a dining hall somewhere very high up in space.
“Whoa, a plate got loose.”
A big hand swept through the air, scooping up the drifting plates one by one. The first one it caught was me, spinning right there in the middle of everything.
“All right, you’re up first.”
Chosen! Finally, first in line! I waited for my food. The cook tipped a ladle of hot stew toward me.
It didn’t land.
The stew broke apart into little brown balls that drifted off on their own. Food floats here too. Nothing was ever going to sit on top of me.
“Huh. Guess we don’t really need plates up here.”
The cook laughed, plucked one of the floating stew balls out of the air with his mouth, and popped it right in. Then he took me—still spotless, still white—and hung me on a hook by the window.
Now I have the best view in the whole dining hall, right by the window. Polished. Perfectly white. Nothing on me at all.
All around me, everyone’s got their mouths open, chasing bites of floating dinner. Not one of them is looking at the plate.