What Ants Would Worship
Naples
After Lorenzo left, Giulia glued bottle caps to the wall.
Rosa watched. Eleven. Her mother used to design real buildings.
"What's it for?"
"Ants need God too."
First week: collecting. Garbage, but organized. Newspapers by date. Bottles by color. Like her mother's brain had flipped from making to hoarding but kept the same rules.
Built fast. Bed frame scaffolding. Coca-Cola windows. Walls of Amazon boxes Lorenzo used to order architecture books in, back when he pretended to care about her mother's career.
Signora Benedetti: "This is sickness."
"This is Tuesday."
Three meters by October. City inspector, dead-eyed. Naples had real problems. Buildings actually falling down. Kids swimming in sewage. One crazy woman's trash tower wasn't urgent.
"Regulation height—"
"Yes yes."
Already four meters.
Rosa helped. Had to. Someone had to. Sorted materials while her mother explained: "Ants carry things bigger than their bodies. Like mothers. Like anyone worth anything."
Slept inside it now. Newspaper bed. Coat-hanger chandelier. Christmas lights from 1987 that blinked wrong.
"Papa wants to know about medication."
"Tell him I'm taking it."
"Are you?"
"I'm taking something."
Seven meters by winter. Reached the balcony. Wind through TV antennas sounded like Rosa's dead grandmother humming.
São Paulo, Five Years After
Living with Lorenzo. His new wife designed real buildings that actually got built.
Phone call: Mama's garbage thing was Instagram-famous. Venice Biennale. Money.
"Don't go," Lorenzo said. "She feeds on attention."
Went.
Nine meters now. Ants everywhere. Actual ones. Using it. Living in it. Being what it was for.
"They'll pay fifty thousand."
"To kill it."
"To move it."
"Same thing."
Japanese curator. Tiny. Serious. Camera worth a house.
"Extraordinary. Post-consumer architecture as prayer."
"It's just for ants."
"The metaphor—"
"No metaphor. Just ants."
But the curator kept photographing. Kept theorizing.
That night: Giulia shredding her wedding dress—second wedding, red dress, another failure—weaving it through bottle caps.
"Why keep building?"
"Why stop?"
No answer to that.
Built until morning. Rosa couldn't not help. Pill bottles became chapel windows. Dead keyboards, an altar. Broken TV, baptismal font that showed static when it rained.
"I designed perfect cathedrals once. School projects. Golden proportions. All that shit. Never built. This—" waving at the incomprehensible structure—"this exists."
"Because it's garbage."
"Because I didn't ask permission."
Curator left contracts. Giulia burned them. Mixed ash with pigeon shit, made bricks. Tiny ones. Worthless ones.
"Come to São Paulo."
"Can't."
"Why?"
"Winter. Ants need sugar water."
"They're ants."
"So?"
"They don't matter."
"Nothing matters. That's why everything does."
Made no sense. Made all sense.
Last day: Giulia on a ladder, adding plastic flowers.
"Real ones die," she said.
"Everything dies."
"Not plastic. Plastic is the only thing that loves us back by staying."
Rosa left. Life to live. Normal life.
But neighbors sent photos:
- Ten meters
- Eleven
- City demolition notices that became part of it
- Giulia on top, arms spread
Venice sent the money anyway. For photos. For the idea. For something.
Giulia spent it on more garbage from rich neighborhoods where even the trash was better.
