Lot's Wife Edition 1 2021

Lot’s Wife • Edition One
Waltzing away, the stench of ostentatious dialogue
wafting from your skin like a perfume, you
find yourself at a new door. White oak, clean,
slightly ajar. As you push through it, the boots on
your feet are now crystalline heels and a dress
the colour of milk falls from your hips and caresses
the floor. Someone touches your shoulder with
the tips of their fingers, gently brushing against
your skin. It is a loving touch, and a giggle erupts
from your lips. A shiny rock weighs down your
finger, and the body you hoped would never
be attached to any individual shivers and falls
against the force of expectational love. Someone
laughs, notes how they never expected you to tie
yourself down. You were always such a feminist,
they say.
A voice, hardened and opinionated, tells you that
they dislike science fiction. You move Vonnegut
and Atwood into an untouched crevice on your
bookshelf. That same voice whispers against skin,
pressing familiar hands against the expanse of
your hips and murmuring words that sound like
what love is meant to be. It’s February, warm and
sultry, sweat pressing cotton against dampening
legs. A voice says that maybe you wouldn’t sweat
quite so much if you would just use those Pilates
vouchers I bought you. That same voice, like honey
against your collarbone, telling you just how
beautiful you are in the lamplight.
Emotionally mercantile, slipping into an environment
with the ease of a chameleon. In your hands
rests the remnants of authenticity and vulnerability,
neglected, an ever-changing yet static condition
of personality. You rest in an armchair, wine
in your hand and scuffed Doc Martens on your
feet. Through the air cuts conversation, light and
clever. Intelligent, unmarred by your illegitimacy.
You ask about Monet’s ‘Woman with a Parasol’.
You googled it once.
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Art by Art Kat by Kat Kennedy