Original Photo by PMMA

I know that the person who robbed me

A few years ago when I lived in

A second floor walk up

On the near west side of Indianapolis

Ten years ago

Was someone that knew me well.

The person broke the door off the hinges of my abode

Knocked the pictures of my family and friends off of the walls

And completely destroyed my living room glass table.

They stole movies and costume jewelry

And a piggy bank under my bed

With exactly 52.17 in change in

Crumpled one dollar bills.

I really didn’t have much worth taking back then.

What tore at the fabric of my soul when I came home

To see my apartment in such disarray

Was that my stereo was gone and

My stereo was my life.

I didn’t watch much TV and I didn’t have an iPod then

So all my music was on compact disc

And organized by name of artist and year of release

In a drawer under the stereo.

Seeing it gone , the empty space where it had been

Cigarette Smoke dust char-coaling the white wall

Outlining where the stereo was

Panic set in-

Why would someone take the stereo

That I had purchased at a pawn shop

In 1999, for crying out loud?

My heart was pounding -I was deliriously pissed

Not because I had been violated but because I make no

Bones about being a nerd, a true fan and

I have certain things

You know certain stuff

Like your first R2D2 figurine from a cereal box in

The seventies or the Spiderman comic you read

In your room when you were a kid

Valueless stuff sentimental trash

But those knickknacks and thingamabobs

Are your life. your moments. your hopes stuffed

In plastic figurines, CDs, old games and stuck together flimsy pages.

I just knew that they were gone, y’ know

I knew that they would go for 50 cent a piece each at least

Had they been sold

On the street or a garage sale

And it would have been a shame too

My memories, part of me, forever snatched

On the the selling block- Part of myself, ripped away at a whim.

I was on the edge of tears for this reason alone but the kicker-

The way that I knew that “sticky fingers”

The person who decided to take my joys, knew me well

Was because yes, they took the music maker

And all of the music but they did me a solid and

left everyone of my Incubus CDs.

EXHALE.

My Incubus CDs were stacked neatly

In a pile

In the correct order

On my comforter

In the middle of the raped bedroom

On my bed waiting for me to come home

Molested but not destroyed.

My gold mine.

A sigh of relief washed over me and the tornado zone that was my home

Instantly became repairable and replaceable- a victim-less crime.

(They only cracked the cases trying to rip the stereo from the wall.)

EXHALE.

I could live with that.

So today I say thanks to

Mr. or Mrs. Neighborhood burglar

For being a polite criminal to a geek and

For not breaking a fan girl’s heart.