Fightinville Journal

The neighbor at the end of the street texted me.  "There was a man rolling around and shouting in the street last night. When I called the police they told him he needed to move on." Later that week we were at a meeting along with the local precinct administrative lieutenant.  "If telling them to move on wouldn't be the answer in River Ranch why is it the answer here," we asked him.  He had enough sense to refrain from stating the obvious, that our neighborhood didn't have the same... anything as River Ranch.  We're working on changing it, but it's a slow process.  A couple of days later, she texted me again.  This time a guy was shouting and flailing in the street, and threw his phone on her roof. "It's still there," she said.  I'll come down tomorrow with a ladder, I told her.  She said this time the cops told her the guy had just gotten out of a mental hospital, and was going right back.  The next day she texted me that a man had...

 I opened my trashcan where it stood on the curb to throw something away. On top rested a box, which I've come to recognize as the last thing people throw away when they become homeless. It in were pages from several different notebooks, letters never sent. I stood there and read them. She was in love with a man, he was in love with someone younger.  She went to rehab, she got out. Druggie roommates stole her stuff. Ripped her off on the bills. Beat her up. She wrote to her absent kids, asked for their forgiveness and understanding and told them how much she had loved them. She prayed. You don't know how lucky you are.