Margen
I found the first one by chance, while dropping in my bottles: one intact, corked, with a rolled-up paper inside. I pulled it out with two fingers. It said: "To A.'s contract, signed at last."
Since then I always look. They appear every week, no fixed day, among the whole neighbourhood's broken glass. "To the April rain, which came in time." "To M., who walks on her own now." "To the kitchen light, fixed after two winters."
I keep them on the balcony, in a row. I don't know who is toasting, or why they drop it in the bin instead of saying it at a table. Sometimes I think it's someone with no one left to toast with. Sometimes, that the bin is their sea, and these are messages cast to the water.
Last night the truck came. I heard the roar of the glass falling, like a wave breaking in the street, and I thought the streak would end: no way of knowing if there'd be a bottle tomorrow, with the bin freshly emptied.
Today there was just one, standing upright on the iron floor, clean as if freshly rinsed.
"To you, who keeps them."