Writing was my fibula – a pin sometimes shaped as a winding bow – often buried with deceased Etruscans: for some, it was their most prized possession.

When I first started writing, stretching the string of my fibula felt great, it was a way of materializing my thoughts into a physical form by exhaling them into words.

But my relief was temporary. I got tired of the way I stretched my string. I kept releasing the same arrow – I couldn’t seem to move away from writing about the same things over and over again.

When I would read through what had come out, it was as if I’d inhaled my sea monsters back along with the sting of the arrow I’d shot: the way I arranged words pinched me with abhorrence. So, I stopped using my weapon because instead of protecting me, it kept hurting me.

Now I had to bring my winding bow to the banquet.

As the dishes – the writing prompts – were passed around, I became conscious of how the other guests bore witness to the strangeness of my fibula fiddling through. We were all served the same dish and I dissected mine in a peculiar way.

Writing poems that – depending on how they’re perceived – reflect how much you hate yourself can be awkward when you’re trying to make friends. It would’ve been easier if we never had to meet again, but it soon became clear we were becoming a family that would grow through potluck reunions to come.

In an ideal world, I’d always know how to keep myself dressed and covered like the top layer of The Basilica of San Clemente. Not to say that it would be a false pretense – quite the opposite. I would know how to tastefully arrange the odd pieces of myself together, like an honest mosaic. It would then be on the visitor to figure out how close they desired to get if they wanted to see the insides of my mind.

But I was trapped in the middle of the three-layered church – I was neither elegantly dressed nor a destructed mess.