Another day, another cathedral, this one a block of white
stone with the obligatory papal pink marble and blue ceilings crushed from
lapis lazuli. As we crane tired necks to find the point above the bare-calved
angels where Mary’s upraised hand pins the tented sky to its firmament, a
beggar in soft papal pink drifts toward us. She wears guilt between her fingers
and a soft skirt of papal pink that clouds her sandaled feet, a one-coined hand
out in the universal language and a photograph of two children in the other. Rebuffed,
she rebounds, as if the air presses her to us, not a fly, but poplar fluff, so
weightless. Later, after we have buried our heads, unpalmed no coins, given
only our dead faces, after the tour, we see her floating from a café, pinching
a cornetto, the soft, flaky dough falling to the cement only to be picked back
up by the wind.
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