"Lot's Wives" by Marie Biondolillo
We wanted swollen peach-grey clouds, we wanted thick, sparkling air. We wanted trampled grass stems to spring up straight; for berries to ripen, instead of browning on the branch. We wanted a sunflower’s heavy head to tilt, tilt, tilt, until it hit the ground and broke, brown seed clumps shattering into wedges for the mice.
We wanted wriggling grubs, tiny gnats. The blind perambulations of fuchsia-soft worms. We wanted a silky black-and-white calico to emerge from a lamp-lit parlor in search of rain-distressed birds, to find none, to toy instead with a worm that had strayed into the street. We wanted his green eyes to be impersonal; his white paws, vicious; the worm’s flesh even pinker when smeared across the damp pavement.
We wanted the gutters to sag with leaves, choking on their bright, water-logged weight. We wanted to see shreds of them decoupaged into the mud on our boots. We wanted mud, period: brown or red or black, we weren’t particular. We were tired of sere, echoing forests; birdless bushes; creeks without frogs.
When we woke up, we wanted our husbands to be gone already, chopping wood in the backyard before it got too wet. Now it was always too hot and there was no point in snatching a second to text our lovers. We couldn’t be alone together; we couldn’t even be alone with ourselves.
We wanted to lie in bed on grey, rainy mornings, storm clouds turning the white walls sallow, legs tensed over our heads & against the wall, wondering luxuriantly if we were doing the right thing. As the chickens cackled and the water rings on our grandmother’s oak tables became, second by second, more indelible, we wanted to make a mental note to roast the rutabagas, and then to not roast the rutabagas, because the rutabagas could keep, it was their sole virtue, and the water rings could be erased with salt, there would be time later, there was always more time, great rippling sheets of it, as soft and blank as bleached cotton.
We weren’t ready to deal with the water rings, but we wanted our skin to stop changing. We thought it was time for our kids to stay the same age. We had gotten everything almost the way we wanted it; we didn’t want to go backwards or be propelled ahead. There had been days when we’d made salads from fennel, lemon, and olive oil, and eaten them in hammocks, smartphones hot against our thighs. Driven inside by thunder, we’d become suddenly grateful for full ovens, lavender-scented quilts, the way the nasturtiums in the window box bent before the storm. Why pile more moments on top of that one? The bad texts, smoky skies, disembodied voices?
Marie Biondolillo is a Portland-based writer from Northwest Washington. Her work has been published by Split Lip, The Jellyfish Review, The Forge, Contrary, and others.
