5 cent dividend

Nothing lasts that doesn’t linger. Though what lasts, aside from the very middle of a dream, when all the faces of everyone you’ve ever known take turns in some sort of absurd role play that leaves you dry mouthed and reeling. Nothing lasts.

I am fighting to stay awake, I tell a pretty maiden, deep into sleep on a night that greeted my departure with warnings of looming deadlines and broke a bottle of champagne on my hull. I know I am sleeping, but it is so comforting here in this place where we live by the laws of neither science nor gods. I hope death is like this, a respite from responsibility among esoteric conversations with pleasant strangers fashioned in the likenesses of people that you used to know.

Lay your head down and I will fight sleep by your side, she says.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you would always look through your change to find a wheat penny? It always felt as though the cashier had made a mistake, letting some treasure of antiquity fall carelessly into your fortunate hands. It linked you to the unimaginable past, somehow, and you wanted to rush to your grandfather and show him in the same way you might run today to Wikipedia. In 1979, your grandpop was the internet.

Maybe in my dreams tonight, he will be there on his patio, feeding the black squirrels and tell me that the wheat pennies were made up to 1958. The last one is barely 15 years older than I am. Maybe some child will find me in his pocket and wonder at the age old mystery of my existence. I found a nickel in my change today, Monticello worn like Medusa on an obol. It was minted in 1973. It is older than dirt.