Because today, I want to go back so bad.

I.

Anna is two and a half. She will not stop playing with pigeons outside the Duomo. Her mother says,
leave them alone, they are eating their lunch! Which they are, of old pizza crust and coffee cups.

We all get inside, where Anna runs around, flapping, long pigtails almost wings, wanting to be a pigeon.

She will not remember this place. When she is older, she’ll see a photograph of the outside of it,
and think to herself, I’d like to go there, as if she’d never been.

II.

On the never-ending Q for the Duomo, you can buy a painting of a naked woman staring at her own nipple, perplexed. The ornary Scottish couple behind you is guaranteed to comment on its audacity.

In front of you, the mother from Madagascar reads to her bored son from a guide book
about 1334 when everything started happening
and woman still wore clothes.

III.

Don’t go to t he chapel of the Duomo in a tank top. They will put an airplane blue gown over your head
to cover you, with reverence, even if you don’t support all these lit candles and sad looking women (angels, Mary, tourists) crafted out of colored glass.

The gown feels like this: it makes you start to spread your legs, n preparation for a paps schmear,
while all around you, the colors are quiet like a sacred carnival has exploded.