This music-inspired prompt that required a lyric from an outside source, a personal relic and silence, challenged me to blend the three layers of myself that I was previously trying so hard to separate.

Understanding that my fibula could bring the outside world (the lyric), the overused memories I was tired of writing about (the relic), and my dazed state of mind (the silence in-between), all into a fresh poem felt liberating. 

Although I entered Rome with a realization of my posthumous existence, it was only towards the end that I started understanding how to work my fibula in order to survive.

I finally began to see my dampened interactions with my surroundings the way D.H. Lawrence claims Etruscans saw death: “a pleasant continuance of life, with jewels and wine and flutes playing for the dance. It was neither an ecstasy of bliss, a heaven, nor a purgatory of torment.” 

I couldn’t ignore the voices of “torment” inside – that just created more foam. But so did being oblivious to the “jewels and wine and flutes playing” in the world outside. I needed to use my fibula as a tool that connected me to the outside world by using express what was within – to create a balance between two extremes instead of waiting hopelessly to be tipped by either side.

I decided to make a conscious effort to not cringe when the ugliness of topics I had buried away to rot splattered through ink. 

The overused themes were wrapped into the protective concrete of a Spolia Wall that wouldn’t let them decay further.

When I stretch the string of my fibula now, I’m no longer as afraid as I used to be. Even if the arrow originates from a monster hiding underneath, the path it travels through is on me.

And that’s the most authentic sense of control I’ve felt in a long time.