Sewer

Author's note: I wrote this story after a visit to NY City. I heard someone talking about the people that live in the sewer. I know this strays from my usual writing. It is a bit more graphic but it had to be graphic to capture the essence of the sewer. As you read this story make sure you take note of the use of the word "sewer." It is about a sewer (one who sews) who lives in the sewer (the underground).  I've updated this posting which is why it will appear as a new post.

 

The sewer crouched in the sewer, weaving excrement into shining bowls of pee and shit. At the same time, the sewer sang the lost song of the dwellers of the sewer like a crying ukulele exhaling into the night. He cried the cry of the broken wolves and sunken jewels of the sewer. And still, he knitted like no one was looking. But they were all watching and wondering what would emerge from the fallen bird; the falcon; the albatross; the phoenix in the ashes of the sewer—arising from the excrement like a sewer rat that has found a new piece of meat that is wonderful, tasty and fun—emerging like the violin music in the subway played by the bum and the beggar and the orchestra. The sewer is sewing excrement into something beautiful and wonderful. Because even in the sewer, there is beauty and wonder in the faces of the forlorn and the lost and the decrepit, faces that are smeared with the lustful waste of others. 

They still have beauty like a flower that withered in the wind - a once lovely blossom now shrunken and silent under the sweltering sun. But down here, there is no sun – nothing to wilt the homeless or burn the etches of time into their faces. Their faces are burned with excrement, urine, sadness, and soiled lives of times gone by. Yesteryear and yesterday and yes to everyone - even themselves - that cried out for the cooling touch of the needle dripping with promise and hope. 

False is what the hope offered – false love and life. Emptiness and excrement became a reality; after the high, after the loop-de-loop of the promise. The sun went down on their lives, and the sewer sewed the waste into the forever darkness of their lost, unlovely bodies. They are lost in the forever forest of the sewer rats, and the sewer feet blackened with crust and gross seepage. 

They were blackened with lost dreams and hopes and sunken memories of the college dorm rooms where they once played and sang. Blackened with the dirty hopelessness of unmarried and unhappy-go-lucky romps on the beach and darkened with the touch of the master excreter – the one in charge of the sewer in the sewer. 

The devil needle promised everything and delivered them into the darkness of their wasted, shriveled lives. It destroyed them like dried tomatoes in the garden abandoned by its master. In the lost garden of Eden, where everything is not as it seems, the sewer in the sewer sews the seams of the dress. 

In the sewer, the soil is defecated by the ones on top—the ones who live in the sun – not the abyss of the sewer in the sewer. The sewer in the sewer sings the song of the deep. At the same time, he sews the serpentine memories into the relics of the lost that they wear like a cloak of darkness on their bent backs and withered skin. 

They wear the cloak of sadness until they fold in on themselves under the weight of the above world. They melt into the tapestry of the sewed feces and urine that have become their home. They fold in on themselves and melt into the abyss. 

The rats sing as another one comes to their dinner table and offers another tasty treat. The meal of sadness that the rats feast gladly on - day in and day out. But it is not day. Not here. The day never comes. The sun never shines, and the rats sing and dance their lively dance because only the rats are alive. Not the others. Not the bums, the wilted, or even the sewer in the sewer.