garbage piles up, the scattered refuse of toilet paper and pizza boxes, the lost hope that we will be clean, that someone else can take this all away. the streets become mired with sewer rats and roaches, crawling up the thin veil of my skin as i lay between cool black plastic bags, my legs trapped between steel dumpsters, green and hard. i would speak if my voice wasn’t sore from swallowing the dregs of beer bottles and pulp from nearly empty cartons. instead i twitch to keep them all at bay, to keep them from my nostrils, the stench of having thrown away something vital and necessary amongst the heap, wet and unusable.