What I Found in the Earth

I will never feel so suddenly close to the sense of a Roman individual as I did finding — with a magpie glance — a little glass bead in the dust, rolled away from some necklace or bracelet into the shadows. I will never appreciate time’s relentless interment of human traces more than when I was brushing layer after layer of beaten or tiled floors, all stacked atop one another like one big earthen lasagna.