Lot’s Wife

I imagine her in the moments before she glanced back, furious:
sweat-slicked and sprinting, ash scattered over her gown and hair,
hearing screams of the suffering bleating behind her; her only
possession: a husband’s name. I don’t believe she looked back
in longing for a home that was never hers. Did she understand,
quick as thunder’s whip, that she could not follow a man who
offered her daughters thoughtlessly as water to a throng of thirsty
lips? And who honors the terms of a tyrant god? At her back,
the heat of the burning city, black smoke, loose golden sparks
scalding her skin as she stops. Her neck the hinge, the bridge
from body to mind, the tender place where the pulse beats.



Reprinted from Apostasies (Perugia Press, 2025) with permission of the author. All rights reserved.