If Objects Could Speak: Stories From the Silent Witnesses Around Us

the pressure comes first a thousand pounds of it all at once then the ink still warm bleeding words into my fibers i am born in darkness under the roar of the press one of 10,000 identical siblings each of us carrying the story of a single day last week we heard the stories of the traffic light its endless cycle of red and green my cycle is different it happens only once i am bundled and bound thrown into the back of a truck while the city is still asleep the first light finds me on a cold metal rack at a street corner the world rushes past in a blur of headlights and hurried footsteps then a hand rough knuckles a callus on the thumb he unfolds me on a diner

counter next to a cooling cup of coffee his eyes scan my headlines first the grand pronouncements of world leaders the rise and fall of markets he traces the lines of the stock market page with a finger and i feel the slight tremor of his hope or perhaps his fear he turns the page he reads about a distant war his shoulders slumping just a little he skips the lifestyle section entirely but lingers on the local news a lost dog a zoning dispute a high school basketball team that won against the odds he folds me not neatly creasing a photograph of a smiling young woman accepting an award he leaves two quarters and me on the counter

my purpose it seems is fulfilled but then another hand smaller a smudge of paint on the wrist a young woman waiting for her order she picks me up smooths the crease from the smiling face she doesn't read the headlines she goes straight to the classifieds her finger stopping on a small block of text under apartments for rent she circles it with a pen she pulls from her bag the ink bleeds through a small blue circle that marries her world to mine she folds me carefully this time and puts me in her tote bag a brief darkness where i can smell old books and mint

the turn comes on a park bench she pulls me out along with a sandwich wrapped in wax paper she makes a phone call her voice quiet and hopeful i am her placemat i catch a crumb of bread the call ends she got it a small sharp intake of breath a smile that no one else sees she finishes her sandwich balls up the wax paper and stands and she leaves me there on the bench the connection is severed the warmth of her attention is gone the wind begins to lift my corners i am no longer a carrier of news i am just a thing that has been left behind

the afternoon wears on a child tries to make a boat of me gives up and tears a long strip from my side taking the rest of the stock market with it the first drops of rain begin to fall they land on my surface like tiny explosions turning the crisp black letters into soft gray blooms the face of the politician the numbers from the market the smiling girl the promise of a new apartment it all begins to run together the stories i carried the hopes and fears i briefly held are washing away

i am becoming something else something simpler the wind lifts me one last time a sodden gray sheet and wraps me around the leg of the bench where i will stay until i am only pulp my words dissolving back into the silence they came from