Panhandling

Photo by River Reid

you found it in the river with its skin dripping off like condensation 

you told me to look at it 

look at it, it isn’t that bad, look at how it catches the light 

(and it was a fool’s thing, what i did next, but i thought of you 

down by the river, the one that caught flame, wearing out the knees 

in your jeans) 

it was a beautiful thing, it caught the light like a beautiful thing would, 

like a hundred crystalline centipedes 

the next time i saw it, you had wrapped it in a kitchen rag, 

stained with grease, and tied that closed with twine 

i asked you if it’s so beautiful, why are you hiding it 

(and there i had gone again, thinking of your delicate hands 

stealing the cloth off the stovehandle, of your fingertips, prints 

burned off, knotting the twine, closing your beautiful thing off 

from the world) 

you cradled it close to your chest, like i would grab it and run 

you said it’s gold, it’s golden, and after i showed you, i didn’t 

think anyone else was deserving of it 

i asked what makes you and i deserving of it 

you dropped it into your pocket and said well, i’m the one that found it 

but must we own everything we find i asked is everything dear to us meant to be a secret from everyone else 

you, flatly, with a hair blown into your mouth, said yes 

you were always so simple like that, 

simple like oil slick leads to fire, 

like the fact that you can be crushed by water 

simple like a fact of life and death 

and how they are colleagues rather than opposites 

i did a very bad thing, you always made me do very bad things, 

(i was talking to the stained carpet about you, picking its fibers 

between my nails, and it told me to stop personifying my guilt, to 

stop projecting its lethargy onto a summer’s day) 

and i stole away with your beautiful thing in 

the inky midnight, when the blacktop forwent curling up in the cover of darkness, and i threw it in that river that caught on fire

it lit up again, and i just ran, i ran, all night, 

all the way to philadelphia 

you caught up to me in the post office, in the parking lot 

of the shoprite, in the metal teeth of my zippers 

and you said must you always dance this shimmering balance act, a hundred crystalline 

centipedes crawling down your throat, must you always tense and gnarl your muscles into battement, arabesque, pirouette, must you always run 

and i said yes

About the Author

Riley James Russo is a young author and poet split between southwestern Ohio and southeastern Pennsylvania. She enjoys writing horror-adjacent fiction, literary fiction, and poetry, as well as the odd screenplay, and volunteers at Vellichor Literary Magazine in her free time.