Copper in your pocket doesn't make you rich or holy, still you can't resist picking up found coins. As a boy, you knew the taste of not having enough, how it was oily like the skins of sardines and pigeons, or sometimes salty like a sore that never heals, or your mother's breath. Your mother knew the art of conserving, how to boil fat and cabbages into a meal, how to wash the plastic bread wrapper without tearing it so you could take your sandwich to school in something clean. After the last baby, her milk went sour. The woman upstairs came, shook your shoulders, spoke secret words mammary and mastitis that you knew by the sound belonged to women. She pulled you to the bed, showed you how to suck the bad milk from your mother's breasts, and spit it into a pan. Afterwards, you stood outside and realized you'd lost something nameless that was like imagination, but not quite. Someone you didn't know tossed a penny at your feet. What else could you do, but bend down, wipe it off, and put it in your pocket?