The plywood didn’t move but made a sound crunch like cereal popping between teeth. Five layers laminated form billboards standing six feet high march along the cobblestone roadway under the Rome winter sky. My fist skins feel hot--seared, branded, worn out. I continue to hit the big boards hard; shadow-boxing immovable objects with drunk fury and unbalanced knuckle punches. I stumble sway smashing signs til the final figure in the row--this billboard is last special, I’ll turn it up to eleven. I step back and launch a fist missile; a right hook meant for clear-cutting sapele-sourced rainforests. The wooden sign sways brief and stills. My hand feels strange, dead, napalmed--a drunken, limp-dicked bush branch on Vietnam fire. It is difficult to ignore the dumbass reality of a bone break but I do my best as the pulverized right transforms into a flesh weight meat sack you can’t ditch; with a dulled pain like an acid trip toe stub. I remove the black leather belt from my jean loops and wrap the dead right man branch tight, carefully closing the latch over the two-hole brass clasp. To make a fist squeeze is damn near impossible which leads me to the undeniable clarity that the hand bone is rift cut split up the calcium trunk. But I’ll sleep on it just to be sure.

Waking up around noon I drink a latte and eat a chocolate-filled brioche at the cafe down the street from the apartment. It is a warm day with tourists consuming the sidewalk space and locals drinking beers on stone Roman patios. There is a cute water fountain in the middle of piazza Santa Maria. It is a cool place. I throw up in the bathroom from the fist pain nausea and decide it’s time for a hospital visit.