There’s this peculiar habit of mine — part curiosity, part unsolicited empathy — that keeps slipping me into strangers’ shoes without so much as a permission slip. It comes unannounced, carrying questions it has no way of answering. A small, ridiculous trigger, really. Random enough that I should ignore it. But I never do.
Because everywhere they are: mini bottles of liquor, scattered across parks and sidewalks like breadcrumbs for morally ambiguous fairy tales. Vodka. Tequila. Whiskey; the holy trinity of just one more won’t hurt.
Now, let me be clear. I don’t appreciate nor am I in awe of the trash itself. I’m not out here romanticizing litter like it’s a misunderstood art form. But every time I spot one of those tiny, glinting confessions on the pavement on my way home — or ironically, on my way to have a drink — my mind betrays me and starts wondering, whose trash is this?
Was it an addict, bargaining with the day? A partygoer, chasing the echo of last night? Or someone who doesn’t even drink, except for that one time — you know the one — and had to get rid of the evidence urgently? The exception that quietly rewrites a rule.
Did that little bottle deliver courage, or just postpone the inevitable? Was it a celebration, a collapse, or something in between? Something too mundane to name but heavy enough to swallow? And, how many came before it? After it? Is this one a beginning, or the evidence of a very practiced ending?
I don’t remember when this became my fixation. These things used to blur into the background, like urban confetti I never RSVP’d to notice. Now they feel staged, deliberate, like the city’s been leaving me clues…or dares. And I even look forward to.
They’ve become my muse, which feels both dramatic and slightly embarrassing, but here I am — attempting to write beautifully about trashy booze.
I catch myself wanting to photograph them. Each discarded bottle posed exactly as I found it, untouched, like a crime scene no one bothered to investigate. I’d frame them, hang them up somewhere sterile and well-lit, give them the kind of reverence usually reserved for things that tried harder to matter.
Because the truth is, each one does. Every empty bottle is a story that ended mid-sentence. And like any good storyteller, I can’t resist finishing it myself.
I’d build a whole exhibit out of them. No faces, no names, just the evidence and my best guess at the human behind it. I’d stand there, selling strangers to an audience who’d lean in, convinced they’re about to learn something profound… when really, they’re just indulging the same curiosity I couldn’t shake.
And maybe that’s the quiet joke in all of it. Not the bottles, not the people but me standing over a piece of trash, trying to turn it into literature, a monochrome photograph, or a modern painting.