$15 By Alex Z. Salinas

I lost fifteen bucks yesterday. 

“Sir,” a bald homeless man had called out to me outside of Barnes & Noble. “Anything you can spare?”

A skeletal, dark-skinned blonde lurked behind him. His wife, I assumed. No, his prisoner. 

“Um,” I muttered. “Hold on.”

I hastily pulled a bill from my wallet and handed it to him. 

When I realized his sun-dried meathook had snatched Old Hickory’s pompous mug instead of Honest Abe's, my mind went, “Oh ****!”

“Holy cow, wow! God bless you! God bless you, sir!”

The man flashed green, rotted teeth. One corner of Prisoner’s lips curled faintly, suggesting a trace of a miserable half-smile. Crow’s feet were absent around her muddy eyes. These people could’ve been thirty, sixty years old.

“Yeah, no, OK,” I relented, then entered the bookstore.

“Drinks on me!” I heard the homeless man shout through the glass doors.

I shook my head and thought, $15 swing. $15.

Later, when my head hit my foam pillow, it was as though God Himself had reached down and caressed my aching sinuses. I didn’t fall asleep so much as drift off someplace else. Dissolve. I was a baby, an angel, a satisfied putto reunited with nimbus clouds; melted butter on top of fresh, hot pancakes. 

Deep, delicious sleep. Sleep money couldn’t buy.

Only fifteen bucks.

Alex Z. Salinas lives in San Antonio, Texas. His poetry has appeared in the San Antonio Express-News, As It Ought To Be Magazine, The Dope Fiend Daily, Duane's PoeTree, and in the San Antonio Review, where he serves as poetry editor.