A shiny penny, perfectly round, perfectly smooth edges. (How few things are so carefully made these days!) In profile Abe's nose beams and wings of fire seem to flicker slowly behind him in the reflected lamplight. His hair and protruding beard are neat but not short. His shirt sleeve is rumpled. Perhaps he fell asleep in it. His bow tie so small as to require a second and third look: did I see that?
He gazes forward, never flinching. In metal no eye-blinking is possible, for surely in life he must have closed his eyes and covered them with large hands and massaged his own worried temples. His cheek bones bridge his face from ear to mouth, his eye rests upon the truss.
Words float above him: In God We Trust. Behind him, Liberty, and set upon his breast bone, 2006 D. I wonder what the coins of his day declared. Whose face graced the pennies he held in his pocket or gave to his children?
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