Page 38 - WTP Vol. XI #6
P. 38
THoMas e. sTrunk
The Coin
Perhaps the silver dollar came from your pension, wages from years at the Philly shipyards,
perhaps a collector’s penchant for things
not truly rare or valuable, like a two
dollar bill or a Canadian penny.
That may have been the first and last time we met. I can’t recall. I only remember you sitting on our living room couch, your head bald and shiny,
and a few years later at your funeral, my mother crying, not because you loved her, she explained, but because you abandoned her, a baby, on a her grandmother’s farm.
Eight years too late you returned,
no doubt jangling coins in your pocket, to purchase a love you never gave,
to repay a debt you never could.
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Strunk is the author of the poetry collection Transfigurations (Main Street Rag, 2023). His literary work has appeared in journals including Trajectory, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Northern Ap- palachia Review and East Fork. He is currently enrolled in the MA program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University.
