a.)

She is Fingers. Actual fingers. Bending at the knuckle to grasp a penny on the con­crete; lifting back up. Penny shines in the light. It is midday. Wealth hits her in a glint that reflects into the shop display ahead. A hundred-dollar dress, fabric in drapes of rasp­ber­ry golds and greens. She turns to the door. Bag shifts in hands, rustles with objects inside. She is Fingers. She holds the penny out ahead of her like a relief paint­ing. She will give the penny away. Someone will get the penny. Someone will give the penny away. Every­thing works this way. The world is com­mod­i­ty. She is Fingers, is a commodity.

They took photos of her once. Pro­fes­sion­als with cameras paid by mar­ket­ing gurus and diamond dealers. They take no photos of her now. One time someone did, on acci­dent. A father with his head up (rare), eye chasing, hand track­ing, a child on a wild tear. She sat in the fore­ground, whorl fin­ger­print smiling into the lens. This habit. Her gaze little missed a rounded glass. She loved the way her eidolon swept into the black hole of the sensor. What hap­pened to her then? Did her body-as-light die on entrance? Sub­mit­ted so fully into bits?

She modeled rings. Twist­ing knots of (osten­si­bly rare) glim­mer­ing metal and diamond. Sat­u­rat­ed by day­light-blue metal halide to high­light the fideli­ty of the cut. Faces that divine, instill spec­ta­cle. Her skin tanned from fair. She made herself into belts of hope, wrapped into loops that she clamped around her waist. Now she feels that recur­sion as a tan­gi­ble thing, how a snake coils around a prey. Past is present. She presents her Penny.

#

b.)

Penny moves forward. He knows no other dimen­sion. He turns, light reflects him, but he knows only one path. He went on a date with a girl once. She seemed to like him; he for sure liked her. But she handed him off to another. His heart broke. He learned to like the new person. But this new person handed him off, as well. His heart broke again. Every person he met pushed him away just as he began to grow attached. 

He learned detach­ment. Learned not to be too invest­ed. To extract what value he could while he had the chance, then move on before he could be moved on.

In some ways he felt lucky. He had met others much like him. Maybe not just like him (Could such a thing exist? Fantasy.), but close enough that he saw ease in his growing nihilism for the cycle of life, expe­ri­enced chaotic plea­sure at seeing the even­tu­al fall of those who clung still to their idea of hope. That down­turn inevitable; their own fault for not con­form­ing to the cynical Fingers’ economy.

Some he met had known long relationships—a 1976 Bicen­ten­ni­al Quarter kept in pocket or palm as a totem of optimism—but were invari­ably lost or their lovers died. Others were much older than him, had lived long, hope­less lives similar to his own. Some suf­fered grotesque, bleaker fates, their faces caked in black gum. They grew unfa­mil­iar even to them­selves, and came to lose their func­tion, worth only what pre­cious metals com­posed their form. He once knew a 1943 Wheat Penny who went from sweet glossy seal to stained on the side­walk in a matter of days.

Stories got passed around that if you lived long enough, showed the right face from the ground, stayed clean and unique, you would be clam­ored for. Live forever in perfect and per­pet­u­al her­met­ic grace. That could be the ulti­mate end. 

But nobody had a sure-fire path for achiev­ing it. It seemed up to the essen­tial state. A random walk. Because, as it looked from the outside-in, even the most perfect ones in imper­fect hands could become landfill.

All this passes through Penny as he moves with Fingers. Par­ti­cles of mind drift­ing along, smaller even than light, sift through him as Fingers and Penny sink into Pocket.

#

c)

Pocket started life sewn inside out, and had to be turned inward. Fingers and Penny fit in Pocket quite well, with room to spare, in fact, and some­times more friends do arrive. Gum Wrapper, Paper­clip, Key-on-a-ring. Some­times it feels like a party. Some­times it’s too much.

Pocket under­stands the tran­si­to­ry nature of Things. It trans­mits, trans­mutes, trans­fers. It under­stands that some­times things are in it, and some­times they are out. Some­times it is filled up far beyond its natural capacity—with the fullest extent of the uni­verse in which it exists—and some­times it is entire­ly hollow. 

It is Pocket’s life duty to hold inside all it can. This it does in love. It has no urge to keep in per­pe­tu­ity, nor does it feel it should, but those that do stop in deserve safe passage. Even when it can feel pres­sure at its seams, full with the intru­sions of its life’s work, Pocket con­tains what comes. There is a reward in the ache, and in the relief of ache’s ending.

Fingers leaves Penny in Pocket. Pocket holds Penny, wraps Penny with its fabric, allows him to dance, to toss about and leave small traces of self. Pocket cares for Penny, but in the way a ferry floats for its pas­sen­gers. Avail­ing all of itself to the service of Penny’s transit. Fingers comes to retrieve Penny and take him away.

Pocket knows that one day, the stitch­ing that holds it together—that allows it to serve its purpose—will one day fall apart. In a way that even Fingers could not sew back togeth­er. Pocket knows that this is all a matter of time and the ending of cycles. Until then, Pocket will do as a Pocket does.