Voices in the Gutter

Then, all at once, the leaves grow back on the trees and flowers begin blooming in the gardens. Orange marigolds and clusters of Blue Flax beside a gray porch. Peace Roses spilling over cracked sidewalks, their petals like miniature sunsets stretching across the washed-out cement. White roses crawling along chain-link fences. The smell of Lilacs and lawn clippings. Cotton floating in the early morning light, sweeping through flickering leaves of Aspen trees and drooping petals of soft yellow Irises.

Winter? Maybe it never happened at all. The snow and endless cold, the bitter winds. Maybe it was just in our heads.

Sunlight pushes out icy skies. Dark clouds dissolve behind flocks of Cliff Swallows swooping through flurries of ashen moth wings. Sparrows on telephone wires, Grackles and Robins in the grass.

On the patio of a coffee shop, a homeless woman smokes a cigarette and stares at Magpies sifting through bits of garbage in the parking lot. She is speaking to an invisible friend. Steam drifting over the rim of her white paper cup; wisps of smoke unfurling from her lips, twisting around her words. She watches me as I walk by and then says to the invisible person next to her: She is looking for the truth. The smell of coffee grounds mixing with gasoline vapors from the fill-up station across the street. The homeless woman keeps her eyes on me and lowers her voice. She says, The truth is this:

But a sudden gust of wind rushes through the streets and drowns out her voice, interrupting the last part of her sentence.  

The truth is this:

Her voice crumbling in the wind. Her words slipping away, vanishing along the sidewalk. The truth lost in the gutters, disappearing in a blur of swirling litter: plastic coffee cup lids and broken beer bottles; silver candy bar wrappers and crumpled receipts; empty red soda cans and torn scraps of paper.

The homeless woman says nothing more and the wind that stole her words pushes me forward. I walk through the gutters strewn with empty whiskey bottles and apple cores. The truth is here, beneath my feet, buried in all of this garbage.

Litter always makes me think of my sister. Not in a bad way, though. It’s just that my sister loves to sift through the bits of trash people leave behind in gutters, searching for any interesting tidbits. She has done this since we were kids, and over the years she has amassed an impressive collection of discarded notes and snapshots and greeting cards. She keeps her favorite pieces in a small wooden box next to her bed.

Open the lid and you will find a trove of anonymous voices: love letters and postcards and unfinished poems. A battered yellow card with the words I miss you so much printed in heavy black ink. A dirty, torn piece of paper shouting Do NOT park here!! smudged with muddy imprints of tire tracks. A child’s message written in Spanish inside a homemade card: Dear Papa, I am very sorry you are sad. I wish we could go back to El Salvador where you will not be sad. I wish we were happy again. Blue ink scrawled along the edge of a diner napkin: Are you listening? I love you.

Among all of these brief glimpses into other peoples’ lives is one piece that we value the most: a frayed shred of notebook paper that my sister plucked out of a frozen gutter years ago, when she was traveling through a mountain town. Only a handful of words, just a few fragments of sentences, are written on the paper, but it is clearly a suicide letter.

Unsigned. Heavy words printed in pencil. Fading paper. Tattered and wrinkled. I have held this note in my hands countless times.

Who are you? I have always wondered.

You could be anyone, I guess.

I hope you didn’t go through with it. This is what I say in my head whenever I read the note. Hasty handwriting; uneven letters. Your life is not garbage. This is what I say. Crooked words printed on thin blue lines. The torn page in my hands, its jagged edges covering the life line etched in my palm. You are not garbage.  

Are you listening?

So many stories drifting through the gutters. Swept away and forgotten.

The homeless woman is far behind me, now. The wind stops blowing and everything is quiet again. I keep walking through the gutters, leaving my footprints in the dust, scattered among fallen leaves and old cigarettes. Among the bottle caps and mud-spattered paper airplanes. Among the unseen, nameless voices.  

Are you listening?

The truth is this: