Beauty for Ashes Poetry Review

Rhonda Williford



One Last Look
Lot’s wife does not fear silence. This
is what the angels loudly warned—the looking
back—the dried, then falling, tongue.
She doesn’t have a name. She swims in silence—
she and her little ones, their bruising offered
as sweetness—coins across a palm.
And so, still she runs with the clamoring
others. How far, how fast, she wonders
to escape what was left behind.
She had packed the bags, helped
the others pack their satchels.
She keeps forgetting the difference—
her daughters already crawling into
the cave—between what they left
and what they took.
She looks back just once
to catch the difference. Finger tip
to tongue tip, she remembers
the salt no body can live without.

Rhonda Williford is a lifelong resident of the Washington D.C. area where she works as a labor lawyer. She has had poetry published or forthcoming in The Plum Review, Wordrights! and Bellowing Ark. Her chapbook One Wide Sky, (1997) was published by The Argonne Hotel Press.

Isaiah 61:1-3

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