Trash

Trash

Looking like the trash that surrounded him, he watched the people ignore him. What a life, begging for money and food, using the paper he wrote on as insulation for his coat, he lived a life of luxury. He had been a writer, not that it worked out to well, but he had been a poet. He had been a great poet
He would sit against a building and observe. Trying to write. Nothing. He was covered in crap and food, vomit and blood, and several other substances he could not identify. He was a mess. His hair, long and uncombed. His teeth where starting to rot, his skin was dry. You are what you eat, in his case; trash.
A tragic kind of irony faced him daily. The best poem he had written had been titled ‘trash’. He basically lived off of trash now. His slow and degrading fall had started with a stupid move on his part. He had sued his publisher and they had dragged him, through the court systems until he could no longer financially fight them.
The downfall of a poet was not a pretty one. He had tried to write, he had tried every thing. He had given up any hope of returning to his past creative greatness. He lost his house; he lost wife, his kids, and his life. He was arrested on a charge of assault. The man had been sleeping with his wife. So he had, in a light drunken stupor, attempted to stab the man.
He had spent three years in jail, not a single visitor, letter, or phone call. He had taken the bus from the jail on his release. Not a lot of sunshine from that point. He lived as a bum, begging money off of any one he could. Not a healthy life. He had tried to write again. His mind drew a blank every time.
He would find any spare piece of paper he could, and in a dieing Sharpie, he would try to write. Nothing came; he just sat there looking at the empty napkin or piece of trash. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing
Then there was her. She was his muse. She was a beauty beyond any he had seen. She was more than he, she was all that he had, wanted, and admired. She was a tall brunette with green eyes. Eyes that could calm the seas, sedate a raving lunatic, and part the crowd. She was everything
Her symbolic grace was what started his mind again. He would write and write for hours just about her, he had hundreds of poems lining his coat. He couldn’t stop; ideas and thoughts just flooded his head. He was beyond he last greatness. A mind works best toward the end.
Everything was just so clear to him. Every little idea, every thought, every movie plot he could never figure out, everything came to him. His entire life fell into place he was, in his mind, what he had been. Things could turn out okay.
He got a job. He got an apartment. He got a shave and a shower, all the time writing about that girl. He was getting clean. The girl had brought him back from death. The girl had saved him. Not to sound cheesy.
He typed up the poems, there where three hundred and twenty three of them. He put them in a box wrapped them, bought some flowers, put on his best shirt and jeans. Locking the door to his New York apartment he was going to talk to her.
The day moved fast. He sat on that bench she would pass on her way home from work. Fiddling as he waited, this after all was his day. He fixed his shirt, stood up and paced; he was shaking.
The girl rounded the corner just up from his bench. This was it. He started to walk toward her. This was the moment, nothing could go wrong. This was his life; he had turned, she being the reason. Nothing could be at fault.
The other man walked from the trees. He was in a trench coat and had a gun. Not everything was perfect. He held the gun to the woman, the poet ran to her assistance. She turned as he reached her and the other man pulled the trigger. A single shot was fired into the poet’s hart.
The man dashed into the woods. Leaving the lady standing alone in the park, standing above the poet. His poems spread around on the ground, the white and black papers and text where dashed with blood. The poet, clutching the flowers, rested on his best work; no longer was it trash. He was not trash.
The poet, the girl, the flowers, and the text, stood frozen in time. Nothing moved, not a sound was to be heard. The poet was dead. He was not trash.


- Kiefer Sandoval