I

And the scratches tint your palms
The blisters scrape your knuckles
Covered in the agony
of the labor
Your internals are tainted with gold
But you shine of bronze
To the world, the metals conflate
And you slightly glisten with a shade of brass
They say: "You're doomed to be a mere shadow"
"Of what?" you ask them
Of the sun.

II

You are a palimpsest
Unable to decide, rewritten over and over again
Broken and renewed
Holding onto the belief that
--you're the penny
That in time, heated by the warmth above
You will turn from bronze to silver
To gold

III

And the dulcet taste of hope shrivels
away until the sun bows down
furtively and slowly
until you can no longer see
from the hole
decorated with the headstone that's
engraved with the shadow of
your initials.

IV

Silver or Lead
Bribes or death,
But you know that treachery may pull you back into the cave
So you choose death,
because your knuckles had already been
dripping with the blood of disbelief since
the departure of the womb.