When I was a boy, mornings
opened like secrets. The garbage
truck groaned up the street, its
wheels chewing the silence. I
watched the man with gloves of
rubber lift bag after bag, unseen
worlds spilling from each one. I
thought, what a great job, to
touch what others throw away, to
know their lives in fragments. I
never told anyone. I sat on
the curb, a witness to broken,
heaped things, their weight eloquent,
their unspoken language humming. I
dreamed of the truck, its descent
into alleys unnamed, the clatter
a song I might carry. But
the years did not unfold like
a road to that truck. I
became a poet, a different collector,
bending to scraps of silence, to
words tossed, left behind. I
found the same weight in them,
the same hum, the same bright
shard of another’s life glowing.
Some mornings, it feels enough.