Forgotten

By
Duncan L. Dieterly

I lay abandoned in a dark dusty center desk drawer, tarnishing. My owner brought me
back from his magnificent Acapulco honeymoon weekend in December of 1966. I thought he
kept me because of my bright silver smile and substantial weight but found out abruptly I was
but an accident of a late night departure celebration and forgetfulness. That evening at home,
while emptying his pants pockets, he carelessly tossed me into the drawer muttering to no one,
“No use lugging this around with me in the states.” He had neglected to cash in his
Mexican coins when he and his twenty-year-old blonde bride boarded the plane home to Denver.
The remaining handful of lesser-valued coins he tossed into the wastebasket.
That was over forty-four years and three brides ago. Since my internment, other coins
have arrived from distant lands: Italy, Greece, Germany and China. None is as grand and noble
as I am, however. We all anxiously wait to be re-circulated. For now, we languish in the desk
drawer tray along with common paper clips, tacks, pens, pencils and odd forgotten keys as our
silent companions. Occasionally he brushes us aside when trying to locate something important.
Our tiny clinking cries ignored.
Sadly, I no longer gleam with newly minted vitality. No longer do his fingers caress my
proud sculpted surface. After all, a Mexican silver dollar is an exciting, unique, exotic object
when first encountered but loses its appeal when compared to newer coins of the realm. It is my
fate to have been brightly minted, briefly circulated, carelessly stashed away; doomed to a life
sentence of confinement, impatiently waiting my reprieve.
I am a proud noble coin. The stern image of Jose Morals, our great revolutionary hero of
1810, is on my face. My reverse reveals the glorious caracara, the Mexican eagle, crushing a
snake in its beak, sitting on a cactus in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The sign provided to our
Mexica people in 1325 by our great God, Huitzilopochti, indicting where we were to erect our
magnificent capital. Both are symbolic reminders of the magnificent heritage of my country. I

1
endure, although reduced to being unwanted, unseen and unappreciated. A lone forlorn dignified
foreign coin, a faded distant memory entombed in a dusty desk drawer.
The End

[Published in Fresh Ink, Vol. XII No. VII, July 2010]

387words

July 3, 2010