She stays there her chest offered to people, to their fingers smeared with small desires, with ridiculous superstitions. They brush the marble as they pass as if it were luck, game, habit. I watch them touch her the way men touch certain women: without asking, without even seeing. And that shine on her breast is not devotion it is erosion. A slow obedience imposed by the world. I want to shield her with my body tell her: you don’t have to let this happen. But statues, like certain daughters, are trained to stay still. And with every fingertip, she seems to learn it.