I saw them this morning on my run, three red, long-stemmed roses, lying in the street against the curb.  They were new, just beginning to open. Expensive, too, not the grocery store kind. I thought for a minute about taking them to the nearest house to inquire if someone inside had lost them, as though they were mittens or a bicycle helmet left on the sidewalk. Ridiculous. Whoever left those roses in the gutter didn’t want them back.

Someone loved enough to buy the roses and someone else loved little enough to throw them away.

I spent the remainder of my run thinking about the roses and what I do could with them.

Writers are the worst sort of scavengers. Overheard conversations,  light on wet leaves, a witty remark, a flash of color,  burned toast, roses in the gutter, we collect them all. Sometimes we use the bits to invent a life or reinvent our own. Sometimes we don’t.  But like the hoarders we are, we always keep the fragments and the wisps and the shadows, just in case. You never know when you’re going to need something.

Long ago, as a new reporter, I was sent to scour the classified advertisements for feature story ideas on a slow Sunday afternoon. Right away I found the  story of my dreams.   A chinchilla ranch was going out of business. Cute crepuscular rodents. Fickle fashion trends. Who could pass up that?

I’d forgotten about the chinchilla ranch until today when I saw the roses in the gutter. Funny how things connect. There was another classified advertisement that Sunday. The assistant city editor, a 30-something woman working through a divorce, nixed it with a frown. No story in that one, she said, and I was off to the chinchilla ranch with a photographer.

But there was a story in the other classified ad and one that makes me wonder still.

Six words. Wedding gown for sale, never worn.

Roses in the gutter. Wedding gown in the classifieds. Little bits of other people’s lives. They didn’t belong to me, but I’ve kept them just the same.