The Coin's Quiet Rust, Or, A Penny's Heavy Weight

Buried under dead batteries,

and rubber bands, the kind that seize

up and snap, that’s where it lay.

An old penny. Not shiny, no.

Just a dull, dark brown, almost black,

the copper gone, its gleam attacked

by time. Or something else.

I picked it up. It smells

of earth, and something metallic, faint,

a sick, sweet paint

of history, I guess.

It felt heavy, not less

than a stone. This tiny coin,

like it’d absorbed all the groin

aches of a thousand pockets,

the desperate, small lockets

of hope, the thrown-away wishes.

It holds so many dishes

of forgotten days, I think.

And on my thumb, a small, dark ink,

a smudge of its old age.

Just sitting there, on a page

of my palm, a small, sad thing.