Sweeping Poem

I used to think my job was simple: sweep the street, empty the bins, keep the sidewalk clean enough for people to forget someone like me had been there at all. Most mornings, I moved like a shadow—quiet, invisible, just a man with a broom and a shift that started before the sun respected the sky.

But one Tuesday, while clearing the gutter near the old bus stop, my broom caught something that wasn’t the usual crumpled cup or candy wrapper. It was a small black notebook, swollen a little from last night’s drizzle but still intact. No name. No number. No stickers. Just a soft, worn cover that felt like it had been held by someone who cared about it.

I should’ve tossed it in the trash bag. Rules said anything found on the street went straight in.
But something in me paused—maybe curiosity, maybe loneliness, maybe the fact that the morning was so still it felt like it was waiting for me to make a choice.

So I slipped it into my jacket.

Later, during my break behind the community center, I opened it. The first page held a short line, written in blue ink that curled like smoke:

“I dreamt of a door that only opened when I forgave myself.”

I sat there longer than I should’ve, reading that single sentence again and again. It felt like something someone whispers when they think no one is listening.

The next day, as I swept the same stretch of street, the notebook came back to mind. I flipped to the second page:

“I dreamt of running, not away from anything, but toward something soft.”

Whoever had written these had a way of folding their whole heart into a single sentence. I didn’t know them, but I felt their breath between the words.

Every day after that, I allowed myself just one new page—like a ritual, or a small promise not to rush whatever this was. And each time, sweeping the gutter didn’t feel like clearing trash anymore. It felt like uncovering fragments of someone’s inner world.

There was a page about a grandmother who hummed while cooking.
A page about a fear of being chosen last.
A page about a boy standing in the ocean, wondering if the water ever remembered the people it touched.

The dreams didn’t feel foreign. They felt like echoes of something I’d forgotten I once cared about.

And slowly—quietly—they began changing me.

I started greeting people more instead of staying invisible. I lingered at the bus stop to watch sunrise colors spill through the power lines. I called my sister after months of silence. None of this felt intentional; it just happened, like the notebook had cracked open a window in my chest.

One afternoon, at the bottom of the notebook, I reached the final page. But instead of a dream, it was blank. Something in me tightened—disappointment, maybe. Or the strange sadness of reaching the end of someone you never met.

But as I held the book, with street dust still clinging to my gloves, I realized the emptiness wasn’t an ending. It was an invitation.

For the first time in years, I wrote something of my own.

“I dreamt of a street where a man spent his whole life sweeping away pieces of himself, until the day he found a piece worth keeping.”

My handwriting looked shaky, unfamiliar. But it was mine.

I didn’t try to find the owner. Maybe the notebook was meant to be lost. Maybe I was meant to find it. Or maybe it belonged to no one and everyone at once—the parts of us we drop without noticing.

I still sweep the same street every morning. People walk past, unaware that the man with the broom carries a tiny notebook that changed the way he sees the world.

Sometimes, when no one’s looking, I flip to that last page and add another line.

Not dreams this time.
Not fragments.

Just small truths I’m learning to keep.