Dead Weight

The ceramic bowl is a graveyard

of pennies and dried-out pens.

I dug to the bottom today

past the lint and the loose ends.

There it was, heavy and brass,

a jagged bit of two-thousand-eighteen.

The year the wood splintered

and the landlord made it clean.

The teeth bite into my thumb

while I stand in the hall.

I can’t remember the swing

of the door it used to call.