That penny stuck beneath my shoe

That penny stuck beneath my shoe

in the crack, its copper dull and new.

Not quite lost, not quite found—

a small weight buried in the ground.

A glint that caught a tired eye,

a silent witness to the sigh

of city buses clatter past,

crumbled cents from lives unasked.

It’s nothing much but held too long,

a tiny anchor, odd and wrong.

A coin pressed in a gritty seam—

a broken thread in some stranger’s dream.