Rome was sex on sidewalks. Rome was body shots, selling cheap tours to English speakers outside the Colosseum, and perfect cups of cappuccino sipped while standing at counters. Rome was celebrating that I hadn’t died before I was twenty. Rome was blackouts, military fiancés, pub crawls in a snowstorm. Rome was trying to forget and failing. Rome was Sicily and bursting citrus trees, train rides to beaches, kissing strangers until my mouth turned raw. Rome was twice, first the summer after cancer and then again, a few years later. Rome was my first line of coke. Afterward I gave a blow job to an Italian man in a convertible and felt magnificent. Rome was pasta and cheap wine, vodka with Moroccans, waking up with no clothes on. Rome was losing euros, giving head for a bump, jumping into fountains until the Polizia showed up. Rome was Canadian au pairs and broken ribs, heatstroke, and honey from Calabria. Rome was the joke about ending up in AA, Guinness on Sundays, and internet cafés. Rome was what should have been my junior year, ignoring California and drinking my weight in cheap pub-crawl beer. Rome was not being there when my grandma or the family dog died and flying home drunk on Halloween to mourn them both. Rome was water fountains on every corner, listening to my roommate fight with her boyfriend, and peeing in the streets. Rome was magic light on ruins, riding the metro for free, and ninety-eight-proof shots that only cost two euros. Rome was the beginning of an end I vaguely intuited and tilted toward, not quite believing. The end, the end, the end rang in my ears, but for a while it sounded like possibility. I had faced cancer on my own. Beaten it on my own. I was going to college. All while my sister and mother and father lived the same day over and over again. To join them in that would be my end. The end, the end, the end hummed in my intoxicated veins. It just took a while for things to be truly over.