
At the Colosseum, note that I am newly bag-free but still with two friends to hold me up
This poem is dedicated to Susanna Brantley and Daniel Mouw.
Pickpockets are like alcohol
They/it wait/s until you are most comfortable
Content, vulnerable, with the ones you trust.
Bragging even, how long you have travelled without it occurring
How much you can drink without getting drunk
And then, they pounce
Taking you quickly at first, you didn’t even notice
Then slowly
For everything your body owns.
Your euros, your dollars, your intestinal lining
Your notebook, your pens, your ability to focus
Your credit card[s], your debit card, your physical stability
Your phone, your fave water bottle, your Burt’s Bees [the worst]…
Even more devastatingly (if one can imagine), your appetite.
Pickpockets are like alcohol
They fuck with your mind, as well as the bank
For not one, but several charges on your card they incur
After which, most becomes a blur.
Except for the fact that the charges were made
At a traditional Sicilian pastry shop
“50€ for a cannoli? 100€, 200€, €500?” the police laughed at my plight.
“The mafia stole your bag.” [Then I laughed.]
“No really.”
Pickpockets are like alcohol
They make you question deeper things – what caused this?
My naiveté, my bourgeois bag, my society?
A simple mistake, the mafia, was it… Evil?
Maybe I deserve this.
The details can make you go crazy:
What if I’d gone to that pizzeria instead of this one? Brought only my phone rather than my bag?
Yes, #thebutterflyeffect: it was that early-morning, espresso-less decision to bring a bag.
Coffee first, next time.
What if I’d spaced out the drinks or even stopped drinking at the final club? What if I’d eaten food; what if I hadn’t?
Water last, next time.
But still, they can get into your pockets.. maybe I shouldn’t bring anything at all.
I. cannot. wait.
to insert a chip in my body… yeah that will be safest…
OMG what happens then, when every human can be tracked??
I just shouldn’t leave the house next time. Yeah, that’s definitely it.
But still, if you space out your drinks with water, you might get drunk; and if you get drunk, you might feel like this
Unable to drink, even water, without the nausea. Oh my… the nasea don’t think about the nausea…
Okay I’ve had it: I’m a teetotaler.
I felt them knock my bag over. What made me just pick it up and place it where it was before?
Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone to the Colosseum, or any tourist-laden site.
Never will I, ever again.

Inside the Colosseum for the first time; contemplating the human thrill that apparently corresponds with taking from others (Photo credits go to Daniel since, after all, I didn’t have a phone).
I know- what if I’d not mixed my grains with my grapes –
What is the saying? Liquor after wine makes you feel like swine..
I drink, often enough, and never-have-I-ever gotten this sick…
Maybe I should have skipped
That mysterious last drink, the bartender’s “favorite”
With the color of ice-ice baby blue…
OMG was I drugged? is the world just generally a more sinister place than I believed?
Or is it a recourse to fear that creates this sad world;
As our attachment to our things creates pickpockets?
No… I don’t know. I didn’t do anything wrong, okay?
What I do know, is that
Pickpockets are like alcohol
Expensive
Breaking your body (and the bank) from time to time, but never
Your spirit.
For all we ever really “have” is the time we spend together.
Cheers, (I’ll drink to that).

Taking back the night in beautiful, beautiful Rome [obscured only by our glistening faces]