The cooler leaks on the right

The cooler is white, scuffed along the lid, and it leaks from the seam on the right end when the ice starts to go. I noticed it in August, at a picnic table behind the library, when my shoe got wet and I thought someone had spilled a cup. The cup was mine and it was still full. The water was under the table, a dark oval in the dust, coming from the corner of the cooler.

I dried the seam and looked for a crack. There isn't one I can see. The plastic has a line where two pieces meet, and the line weeps once the ice water finds it. If I pack the ice on the left and the cans on the right, it leaks later. It still leaks. A towel under that corner catches most of it. The towel smells like cooler even after it dries, a sweet plastic smell, and I hang it on the fence rather than bring it inside.

I thought about buying another one. The store near the office park had a stack of them in orange, on sale because summer was supposed to be over. I stood in the aisle with one in my hand and put it back. The white one still closes. The latch on the left is firm. The leak is a known thing, like the fountain at work that is off. You plan around it. You don't stand the sandwiches on the right.

Sunday I took it to the turnout and didn't open it. There was nothing in it but a bag of ice I had bought out of habit. The ice melted on the way home in traffic, and the towel on the passenger floor did its job. I poured the rest out at the curb. The curb was already wet from a neighbor's sprinkler. My contribution didn't change the look of the street.