The Colosseum

I don’t go. I don’t care. What is there for me? But I walk past it, often. It is impressive in its size. Named for the colossal bronze statue Nero built of himself, the vast amphitheater later pointedly built on the site that had once belonged to Nero’s private park. The lines curl outside, men in cheap fabric armor cozy up to tourists for photos. And—have fun. I am not fun. I want no vision of the deaths in it and the cheering. The most interesting fact I learn is it was once filled with hundreds of varieties of plants from all over the Roman Empire, from what was carried in the bellies of animals killed there (flamingos, hyenas), the seedy fruits they ate. The gore-dirt sprouted all the colors and green shapes otherwise foreign to the city. But those plants don’t exist there now. All those I care for were dead when they started stacking the building’s limestone.

But it trails me all over. Look at something from another vantage, and it hovers in the distance. Enormous, pale, pocked—like a dry honeycomb cracked open.