A Salt of the Earth Type of Worship

I want to whisper your name at the end of each prayer.

The so be it command, the final amen of God’s shifting

loam settled into your damnation-wrought form. But not

settling, no. A stumble and spread-eagle splat into a

deep well of born-again clay. The muck of living

grief guiding us closer until our filthy mingled breath

coaxes that oh lord-marbled future out from hiding.

Listen, I’ve been musing about carving you into stone—

every night I dream of etching my name into your hips

as your hands twist through my hair.

You know that feeling when pick-up lines turn into pillars

of salt? Preserved in the mind and never spoken. Lot’s

wife’s longing glance for Sodom, the wasted abundance

carried in each selfish what-if daydream soon destroyed.

Running with her daughters as the city burns, husband

offering them up like meat to her seasoning. I’ve found that

you can’t carve salt like limestone or marble. Bringing such

human weakness to pious luster —a blasphemy spat into

the gutter— God, what a crumbling sinner she was,

asking where her home might be.

Listen, I’ve been musing about damning myself with you—

every day I imagine flipping off God as he peers stony-eyed

down into my workroom where I’ve posed you: Knee bent

in genuflection and staring up at me. I’m tempted to look

away, in idle hope that my idol-worship might be forgiven

just this once. But I hold your gaze with a heathen’s faith that

the clay enclosing my feet will keep me upright just long

enough. Oh, he’ll have to smite me before I let the grip-clammy

chisel drop from my salt-sprinkled hands and mar the beaded

so be it-’s forming on your brow.