Half-Lost Serial

In my father's desk, the bottom drawer,

beneath dry bills and a forgotten wrench,

a coin-sized coldness met my hand.

Not his.

No familiar name pressed deep.

Just letters, half-worn, a dull gleam

from the thin grey light through dust motes

dancing in the quiet air.

The metal edge, a tiny burr,

where some machine had punched its claim.

A stranger's serial, a few

curved hints of something gone to rust,

a number that once meant

a man, a body,

a place in line.

He kept it, though. Why?

A debt unpaid, a face

remembered from a nightmare map?

It lay there, heavy,

a story with no mouth.

I slid it back,

the drawer a kind of tomb.

The quiet settled.