Divine and Damned (Marcella Boccia)

Divine and Damned (Marcella Boccia)I was sculpted from Carrara marble,veins of sorrow streaking the white,a statue left unfinishedby the careless hands of fate.They crowned me with laurel and thorns,called me divine,but my tongue tastes of rust and requiems,my prayers are written in ash.O Florence, city of drowning saints,your frescoed heavens hold no god for me—only the gaze of hollow-eyed angelstrapped in their golden frames.I have walked through Pompeii’s silence,where the dead whisper beneath my feet,where love was etched in volcanic stoneand buried before it could burn.I have bled in the Colosseum of my mind,where gladiators still fight their ghosts,where my ribs are the arches of ruins,and my heart, a fallen empire.They say poets are half divine,but divinity is a wound—a gash where the world seeps in,a mouth that cannot close.I have seen too much,felt too deeply,stood at the altar of existenceand cursed the gods who made me.O Rome, O Vatican, O gilded lies,no cross could bear my weight,no heaven would have me—I am both sacred and forsaken,divine and damned.