Peyton Cole

For Your Thoughts: A One Cent Elegy

Discontinued on November 12, 2025.

You know what it’s like to cost
more than you were ever worth. Then why

were you made? To sit on pavement
and wonder what it would feel like to be held
by something other than the Earth? Does it hurt

when you start to turn green, to feel
cheap? People used to think they were lucky

to have you, but now you can’t remember the last
time you weren’t ignored. Even as you become
rare, you can’t keep up your fake bronze long

enough for them to care. Get used
to car cup-holders, and couch

cushions–the bottom of women’s
purses. You were only made not
used.

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Peyton Cole is a sophomore undergraduate student at Salisbury University. She has worked on and been featured in her school's literary magazine. She is a nursing major and creative writing minor, and she hopes to bring these two worlds together and show that they do not need to be separated, but can be blended together.