St. Zita

You had to see her for yourself, you said,

and so I tagged along, a foreigner

to churches, nervously reverent

in every darkened apse, inside the rich,

velvet-thick must, buttress-enclosed and bordered

on all sides with somber della Robbia blue

and gold leaf-tinted rapture, visible trusses, each form

mortared in place and deathless, separate from time.

Trapped in a photograph, I can still see the rush

of poppy-dotted fields, light hovering

in slow, translucent globes, your blond hair

drawing stares, the train ride uncomfortable.

Girded for centuries by ramparts, largely untouched,

the city beckoned us, and when we ducked

into the nave—leaving behind the sun-baked courtyard,

the hunched, black-kerchiefed women shaking

their heads, clucking their disapproval

of our bare shoulders and cameras, open-toed shoes—

and shuffled breathlessly into the cool

of yet another dim side chapel, we found her

whole as they had said: her glass case sized

to fit a child, limbs sapphire-wrapped, her forehead

crowned with roses. Incorruptible, they call her,

and in April lift her out into the square

where we pored over her frame in disbelief,

traced with our fingertips the wooden angles

of her wrists, her cheeks. Like you, I lit a candle

as we left her small, cold chamber for a blur

of unwalled country and a lengthening chain

of strangers, unremarkable, their names

not mooring anywhere—the field light

and our spare, convent-like room, your face

a girl’s still then, looking solemn from the window,

looking still out from the dull blue of the veil

I had you wear for that one portrait I saved,

gave to you last year for your wedding.