It was somewhere in the rooftop culture of Tangiers where I lost my Dark Green/Olive High Peak Simex Sport Sirius Sleeping Bag.

It happened when the pain came upon me like a riptide, grabbing at my ankles and pulling them back until I fell, face first, into a comfortable zipped-up slumber. A thousand steps, they said! I climbed like a lustful ram, up the blank grey walls until I saw music and light, and then I fell because it was the farthest I could go. There was rustling at the corners of my dreams, like beetles at their homecoming dance. They went for my things, kept from them only thanks to the 100% Polyester that hooded me like the unnamed covering which was once removed from me as a child.

“Open up!” said the policeman. “Open up for the law!” I knew he’d seen my small included pocket. It was empty now, and that made him mad. “Take this one to the offices and process him.” I tried to seem small and meek, like the time I met a bear in the desert, and escaped.

“Can I take my Dark Green/Olive High Peak Simex Sport Sirius Sleeping Bag along?” The cop waved his hand like I was beneath him.

“Zzure, zzure.” His radio buzzed like a sick housefly, deep in its twenty third hour. “Take what you like. Juzzt get lost. You people make me zzick.”

My Dark Green/Olive High Peak Simex Sport Sirius Sleeping Bag was easy to carry, but in the state I was in, I could barely lift it. I hurt all the way to my bowels. “Get a move on!” and I tried, but my knees were like a pair of hinges on which a battleship rested. They gave generously and I felt the hard stick of disobedience on my neck. The last I saw of it was in the arms of a deputy who was stroking the zipper cover that kept even the zipper hidden. I was taken with my paperwork to be copied and filed. I never saw my Dark Green/Olive High Peak Simex Sport Sirius Sleeping Bag again.

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