Legal Tender

The tub is yellowed like a newspaper

left in a window, the rooster on the side

half-gone, from some brand that stopped being a brand

before I could drive.

She kept it behind the good pans

nobody used. Inside:

a rubber band worn to a filament,

four pennies, a Canadian dime.

Nobody knows about the dime.

I asked her once and she said she didn't remember

and I believe her and I don't.

I stood under the fluorescent light

long enough that the refrigerator cycled off

and the kitchen got quiet the way kitchens get

when you stop moving in them,

still holding it,

hearing the coins

shift.