i tried talking to god but i wasn't getting the answers i needed. i wasn't on my knees with my hands clasped together but i was lying in bed, my arms at my side, eyes looking up straight towards the ceiling. blank, white and flat. the sound of traffic, a strangely soothing yet raucous symphony, outside the window. i am empty. my body feels devoid of bones, solid matter, blood and heart. my body feels light as air and inside my head does too. i try to figure out what I am feeling-
when i can't and all i am left with are my own frustrated sighs and a wrinkled white bed sheet haphazardly weaved around my body to keep me from falling apart, i try to form words but all i manage to string together are visions of a widely spaced out ellipsis. the wind turns my plastic blinds into wind chimes and the sound of plastic and it's dull tinkling brings me back to earth.
"but she did look back, and i love her for that, because it was so human. so she was turned to a pillar of salt. so it goes. people aren’t supposed to look back. i’m certainly not going to do it anymore"
i am lot’s wife.
i, too, keep looking back and i wonder when i will be turned into a pillar of salt.
i look back in times of uncertainty because looking back brings perverse comfort. i look back when i am lost and i am in need of familiar faces no matter how unfriendly, and familiar feelings no matter how searing and painful they might have been. i look back when i am standing on unsteady feet and i need solid ground. i look back when i need to grasp onto the familiarity of something that already has happened because there is a safe word: past tense.