The Leaning Tower of Pisa Weighs 14,500 Tons and This Woman, Pretending to Hold It Up, Isn’t Even Breaking a Sweat

In the Piazza del Duomo, alone,
the art of tilting is historicised 
with weightless disdain. 
Hands out,
back turned, 
bad posture and a lack of formal 
training is offset by ritualistic need.

She looks to the camera without shame 
and undoes geometry,
defies nature without
apology or qualm.
It's easier now, the angle less steep than
it used to be, requires less effort and yet

her undiplomatic smile ruins me,
filling bones with exhausted shivers 
of regret as 
gravity, 
mass, 
and destiny
are denatured and made obsolete. Can she not
hear the whispering panic of Christian saints?

Is she not grappling with the miracle of it—
with the power
of graft, the dead
bodies all around
us? She erases history
with a gesture, with a gentle mucky
hand, and I, surrounded, bear witness:

We are all rituals enacting ourselves 
over and over until 
they become duty,
become chore,
become dust, until
dust becomes stone, 
with which we build new holy places and 
find new ways to keep ourselves amused and

she is not alone in this, and neither am I,
but at one time,
someone else 
stood here alone, 
raised their palms,
turned to the camera, and became 
the stained glass window of a church.