I walk through the park every day.
Sometimes I squeeze through the crowd and toss a coin into the fountain, longing vibrating through every molecule of my body.
I’ve done it maybe twenty times now. I wish for the same thing each time.
(I can’t say what it is, though— then it won’t come true. And I really need it to.)

Amid a cluster of intermingling people, I stand almost-alone;
Me and my coin and my one wish.

I wonder, sometimes, how much it matters.
If I’m just deluding myself and tossing  
pennies nickels dimes quarters
Into the water, emptying my wallet splash after splash in naive pursuit of something I know I will never have.

Small children join me in tossing nuggets of wishful thinking, their parents laughing at the naivete of it all.
I imagine a world where I don’t rely on a coin to shift my luck.

I wonder if I know somewhere beneath this self-deception that it doesn’t matter.
That no matter how many pennies I toss,
No matter how many stars I wish on,
No matter how many dandelions I blow into the wind, eyes squeezed tight with desperate desire,
Sometimes wishes just don’t come true.

But I know I’ll toss another coin in tomorrow. I don’t have to wonder about that.

There was always two sides of a story
But sometimes no connection could be made out of them
Because both were lies

☯ and all the wishes stuck in their throats.

(i.) when i throw quarters
i wish i knew
what the universe tasted like
in my tea; and then i wished
that i could hug my babushka
& dedushka again for the last time
before their hourglass ran out.
i wish i could still witness the way
the light dribbled like honey in
that foreign land familiar street.
Back then I was taught that love
was contagious by nature,
that love was unconditional-
---maybe that’s what the universe really
tasted like to begin with.


(ii.) when i throw dimes i-
wish that my antidepressants were more
like leftover echoes
that i’d eat for dinner.
i wish i hadn’t said that but it’s too late
‘cause this ode is too busy
tripping over it’s own shoes;
i wish my poem knew how to tie it’s own shoelaces,
and knew how to say grace.
but most of all...
i wish there was a softer metaphor
to lower me into this hurting;
just like the leftover echoes

(iii.) when i throw nickels
i wish i could erase the murals of flashbacks
behind my eyelids;
before i fall asleep.
i’m convinced that they’re to blame
for my eyesight that acts more like
a broken compass than a disability.
i wish i was blind to the way
the world spoon feeds us the dark;
like it’s a requirement for us
in order to flower into people.
i wish i could fish my name
from infinity’s belly.
please just never wish for
infinity.

(iv.) when i throw in pennies
i wish i wasn’t their daughter.
i wish i didn’t have russian strings
and american footsteps for bloodlines;
i wish i was born a moon somewhere,
orbiting or worshipping the the color of
space, which is coincidentally the color of poets
the color of ink.
i wish my forbidden fruit was poetry,
i’m glad it isn’t.

(v. ) and i think,
i will always wish
for quicker deaths.

Millions of coins
Tossed into the air
then time stopped.
And began again, slowly
while all the sides
turned and flipped
side to the other side
The wind churned and
the coins landed one
way or the
other.

Birth was given
when they landed
In the order
that chance gave them
Until they stopped spinning.
The rain came
The water broke
the baby was born.
One way or another
How was the landing?
Chance and choice
Flipping coins again today.

I will not crave the admiration of others on the reflexes
of what I verse, incomplete metaphors  are a valuation
of what you perceive in what is collected in the vaults
of my indiscriminate imaginings.

I will throw a penny in the fountain of what I spill in
unprecedented flurries. Would you catch what I scatter
into the pond of vacant words. Would you catch what
I throw? or watch the ripples of what it could become.

I will always throw a stone in to the white to see what
splashes on the verges of mind. I'm more deep than I
know, how many coins will you throw to see my depth.
Will all sink not  showing the shimmer of my words.