4

A Dialogue Across time. Lot’s Wife and a 21st century Journalist

 

 

J: What did you do in prison?

 

LW: Sang to my daughters

of the birds and the bees

Mourned for my girls

who would never know love.

 

J: What did you do in prison?

 

LW: Tried not to scream

And to not scream you do this:

You put together the woman in the next cell

J: What did you do in prison?

LW: Recalled the fingers

The women’s fingers -

They held all ten fingers in my face

Then closed their fists and

Opened them again

To show ten more men who had died

Tearing through freshly dug graves

Identifying their loved ones

By a scrap of fabric

That they themselves had sewn

J: What did you do in prison?

  

LW: (I) tried to turn the violence into songs

And even myself,

I would become a song

But all I thought of was you.

  

J: Who am I?

  

LW: You are the woman in the next cell. You are the woman I made up to keep me alive. You are the cry inside my throat that says remember me, remember me, remember Lot’s Wife

 J: I heard you

LW: You heard me?

  

J: I heard you singing…

J & LW: If you can hear her/me

LW: Scratch your name

Scratch your story

Scratch your song

J & LW: Into the stone

Into the salt

LW: Into my body

J & LW: If you hear her/me…

Scratch your name

Scratch your story

Scratch your song

LW: I’ll arrange them

Like tea leaves

Like puzzles and operas

I’ll touch your bones

Your pain

Your story

And put you back together

The woman in the next cell