An Object Found in the Trash

Cobbler | Umber | Haunt | Grumble | Raincoat | Unleavened | Bravery | Ray | Toffee | Imaginary

The dumpster behind Saffron House is a goldmine if chana masala with an uneaten side of samosa is your speed. Delton’s Raw Bar? Used to haunt that place Thursday nights after the all-you-can-eat crowd left, until a run-in with discarded oysters knocked the bravery out of me. Dishonorable discharge in the trousers will change a man’s eating habits. You want cakes that didn’t rise enough or English toffee, you excavate the trash behind Flour Power. Scored a killer slice of cobbler there last night – mixed berry with maybe three bites gone – but I’ll forgo the sweets because a brother gotta care about his dental state.

I know what y’all think of me, walking past with your mug buried in a screen or having an imaginary conversation on a phone that hasn’t rang in weeks. You see me and pretend you don’t, embarrassed by the Gucci loafers and Prada bag. Preemptively avoiding the excuse me, ma’am, you put the Jimmy Choo’s in high gear to make the crosswalk before the light changes. The umber heels were a brave choice with black slacks, but who am I to judge. Pretending you forgot something back at the office and desperate to avoid sir, any spare change, you spin the other way and give me a look at the tails of your Brooks Brothers knee-length raincoat.

But I don’t want your charity, Ray. Keep the dollar bills for your next Chai latte, Madison.

Leftover fettucine or half a burger would be mint, but the grumble in my guts says I’d compromise and take some unleavened bread about now. So I flip the lid on each can behind The Ranch Water, hoping to exhume frijoles negros or even a chicken quesadilla that could be warmed over the steam vent, and I spot it. At the bottom of the can, dusted with the crumbs of cold churros, it’s shimmering in the glow of the halogen streetlamp above me.

The colors transform and shift, purple to orange to red to yellow, like a deep-sea squid pulsing out a warning. Expanding and contracting like a beating heart. I wrap my hand around its iridescent warmth and feel the energy hedgehog through my core, the quake of latching onto an electric fence. That buzz tells me there are no more dumpsters in my future. No, there’s a new world ahead. And I don’t need your charity.