Sarah Iqbal’s poem “Copper Pennies” won third place in the BYU high school writing contest. She is a junior at Townsend Harris High School in Bellerose Queens, N.Y., where she is a staff member of the literary magazine.

Copper Pennies

I dropped a penny into a plain glass jar every time I wanted to tell you I loved you,

taking one out every time I’d mustered the courage to look up and voice it myself.

Three days saw twenty-seven pennies, by the end of the week the jar began to overflow.

So I spilled a sea of copper onto my living room floor and counted to six hundred fifty.

I carted my jarful of unspoken promises to the corner store, the woman at the counter aghast

at my gall for buying an item in change, as if I didn’t need to boil coffee dregs

even after they were washed out, in the hopes of having coffee-flavored water with breakfast.

If I could have bought you a kite with the warmth that flushed through my cheeks at your name’s sound,

I would have, but I settled on using the round pieces of metal, signs of my weakness

as I scratched our initials on the back of the cheap wooden skeleton.

I didn’t tell you I loved you, six hundred fifty times too many

because a lump of feeling gets trapped in the space between my collar bones

when I consider unveiling myself in your presence, the barrier between our souls dissolved

along with any notions of safety that would worm their way into the crevices of my mind for protection,

and as you intertwined your fingers with mine, gazing up with bright eyes, at the dancing red kite

I made a mental note to toss another penny in the jar.