cast alloy · 21 mm · pierced square · provenance unclear
a small, dull coin with a square hole through its centre, the kind once threaded onto a string and carried by the hundred. it is not from a place you have lived, and it is not, as far as you can tell, current anywhere. the characters around its hole are not legible to you.
it came home from a market overseas, given by a stallholder as change he did not, on reflection, want to carry. he closed your hand over it with a small, practised gesture and said something you did not understand. you walked away with it tight in the palm, and only days later, in an entirely different city, did you find it again at the bottom of a coat. it is unlike the other coin in being smaller and lighter and stranger.
it is a charm now, not a denomination. you turn it in your fingers in queues. its square hole means it could, if you wished, be threaded onto a length of brown jute and worn around the neck, but you do not wish to: a charm carried in a pocket is, you suspect, more powerful than a charm displayed.
field-note · catch it in low light: the rim is older than the face.
pebble · lozenge · handkerchief · naturata · number