Lot's Wife
02.08.01
11.23.03
Sardines in oil that crunch between my mother’s teeth. Ragged red strips of lox on a freezer-burned bagel. I piss long strings of pearls for two hours straight—the toilet bowl overflowed and the floor grew wet and slippery with toilet paper rags and broken beads. Someone banged on my stall all during recess but “I like the angry birdhouse”
A naked girl with a rosemary wreath scratching her temples handed me an 8-oz Coke bottle filled with shells and indicated I should turn it to salt. The gumball machines are full of parasites—all the chocolate bars are wrapped in rust. Roads are paved in (unsalted) peanuts, the shells leave delicate splinters between my bare toes. My swimming pool is full of pedialyte. The tips of my nails are silver-edged and the girl is standing silent, scratching a mosquito bite on the back of her ankle. I’ve forgotten how to turn the shells to salt. And then she wrinkles her nose pointedly and turns her head, twigs scraping her cheek—there is blood on the inseam of my thighs. Squatting over a large conch shell I practice my Kegel’s with the unhurried desperation common to dreams. The shell fills—sand turns brown around me—there is too much blood. The shell is in the girl’s hands now, she holds it out carefully. I am still bleeding. I smell a body behind me before I see it – someone slaps my back, hard and the bleeding stops like hiccups. Someone curls me thoughtfully on the sand, tucking my knees beneath my chin and whispers I should lie quietly here until I wake.
11.23.03
Sardines in oil that crunch between my mother’s teeth. Ragged red strips of lox on a freezer-burned bagel. I piss long strings of pearls for two hours straight—the toilet bowl overflowed and the floor grew wet and slippery with toilet paper rags and broken beads. Someone banged on my stall all during recess but “I like the angry birdhouse”
A naked girl with a rosemary wreath scratching her temples handed me an 8-oz Coke bottle filled with shells and indicated I should turn it to salt. The gumball machines are full of parasites—all the chocolate bars are wrapped in rust. Roads are paved in (unsalted) peanuts, the shells leave delicate splinters between my bare toes. My swimming pool is full of pedialyte. The tips of my nails are silver-edged and the girl is standing silent, scratching a mosquito bite on the back of her ankle. I’ve forgotten how to turn the shells to salt. And then she wrinkles her nose pointedly and turns her head, twigs scraping her cheek—there is blood on the inseam of my thighs. Squatting over a large conch shell I practice my Kegel’s with the unhurried desperation common to dreams. The shell fills—sand turns brown around me—there is too much blood. The shell is in the girl’s hands now, she holds it out carefully. I am still bleeding. I smell a body behind me before I see it – someone slaps my back, hard and the bleeding stops like hiccups. Someone curls me thoughtfully on the sand, tucking my knees beneath my chin and whispers I should lie quietly here until I wake.
posted by Octavia at 11:29 PM
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