In this city of constant hustle and go-go many people don’t stop to pick up lost pennies, nickels, small change that falls to the sidewalk. But I do. The dime that has been kicked to the corner, the penny with its lucky side down, it doesn’t belong to me, it doesn’t belong to anyone. I call it god’s money, it belongs to god. So I pick it up, put it in a special place in my bag, and my rule is, I have to give what belongs to god to the next person who asks me for money.

So this morning I know who I am giving it to right away as she enters my train car, yanking the door open, lurching in. Her sway might be from the movement of the train, might be from chemical substances. The way her face is moving as she asks for a handout, I am guessing she has had a stroke. She is getting a worse reception than I usually see. Perhaps because she is not amusing, perhaps because her story is not compelling. When she gets closer to me I figure out why. She has soiled herself, and the smell is assaultive.

She is so out of it, so lacking the perpetual panhandler 360 degree sense of impending reward, she doesn’t even notice me digging in my bag for god’s money. I walk up to her with it, look her in the face. Her eyes are rolling, unfocused and I make sure that I don’t just drop the change into her hand. I press it into her palm, feel the warmth of her skin, the worn smoothness. I also feel the rot, how her internal piers have rotted away, how little there is to hold her up, how her moorings have thinned and snapped and now she is free sailing inside her own skull, inside her own flesh.

My money, god’s money, will make no difference to her in this day. When she leaves the subway car my pity and my helplessness well up and constrict my chest. I struggle to maintain my commuter face, clench my jaw, but I see my reflection in the black train window, I see my eyes getting wet.