Nickel Girls

Sometimes boys would stand 
on the high school stairs 
and throw nickels at girls 
in low-cut blouses, hoping 
the nickels would lodge 
somewhere. They never 
dropped nickels on me, and 
though my mother liked it 
that way, I think it might 
have been nice to be a 
nickel girl. I don’t know 
why the inability to trap 
coins in an area of my 
person compelled me to keep 
straight A’s, why that made 
it logical that my hair 
remain short, why it hurt 
just a little when my mother 
came home each day from work 
and thanked me for cooking 
dinner, hugging me and saying 
how delicious I smelled.