The Pillar of Salt

women as witness

THE PILLAR OF SALT

Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash

Driving away from the scene
Nothing is left
I look back over my shoulder
And am transformed into a pillar of salt,

Forever petrified, eyes fixed,
I stand as a warning
Of the lethality of past catastrophe
The inescapable urge to look again
At another place and time.

The women, the setting sun, 
The promises of tomorrow
All in ruins, a night of terror,
I tremble and do not know the reason,

I hear the thunder of a new ocean
Spilling over the cliffs,
My soul draped in a paralysis of doubt
Beseeching  the angels for rescue,

I confess to the sin of curiosity
The same curiosity that lured Eve to the apple
And influenced Ado to freeze in her tracks,
The what could be, the always already

The crystallization of the sins of the father
Deferred in a frenzy of accusation
A mire of condemnation.
Sculpted in marble, the Pieta, 

The sixth sorrow of the Virgin,
Is a suspension of the abomination of loss
Chiseled for all time.

We see the faces of women
Shocked by the devastation
That accompanies the sentence of gender
Passed down by the God of Man.
© 2025 Stephanie M. Vargo