My name is Phil Kaye, and I wanted to share a poem of mine called "Two Bills." I write a fair amount about growing up and about childhood.

And I know for me, often I'm tempted to write about just the big, obvious headline memories, the things we talk about all the time. But this was a smaller memory, something I had forgotten about.

And it wasn't until I was free writing and brainstorming that it came back to me, and I wanted to share it with you all today. and yes it does beg the question why a nine-year-old needs two twenty-dollar bills still sticky and crumbled, just the way they were when taken from my mother’s purse suddenly, suffocated snug in the navy Velcro wallet my mother bought me because I begged and she said the blue reminds me of you the two bills safely hidden except maybe to show Eddie Tamsin who somehow had sixty dollars in his wallet more money than I had ever seen in a palm no, the two bills were to stay here crushed against each other promising something— a safety I could not put words to then, perhaps still am chasing now the two bills would whisper only my name the things I thought they might be worth two a half CDs a week’s worth of food a warm bed in a different city perhaps even a new sink for my mother which was now a dull red the crimson drip of corn syrup from the drink she had been holding for me in her purse, now staining my hands, my nails under the blabbering faucet the liquid ruby settling itself like a dim blanket onto the white basin that I would soon replace for her with a better one with handles that didn’t squeak and my mother, the next morning, with her hands clean, outstretched, calling me into her room – saying it evenly I need it back neither of us needing clarification how she didn’t look at me when I put it in her hand how after, she still left the purse at the bottom of the stairs open where it had always been