Coin at the Bottom

I dropped the first with clumsy hands,
a small, bright wish for painted things,
for plastic crowns and paper dreams,
for everything that childhood brings.

the second rang a softer cry,
it sank with things I half-knew,
a wish that someone else might stay,
might say my name the way I do.

the third I turned between my fingers,
felt every ridge before the fall,
and asked for distance,
for no one there to hear me call.

the fourth slipped in without a sound,
no plea attached, no desperate art,
just something like an empty breath,
a stillness settling within my heart.

now when I lean above the rim,
I do not search for what I threw,
the coins are strangers to my hands,
their faces worn, their meanings too.

and if I reach, I will not find
the girl who stood here years before,
just circles dropped in ripples of time,
and something less
but nothing more.