Look Backwards

Imagine the long dark hair of Lot’s wife swirling around her sun-beaten face, her scarf loosened, her gown spotted with ashes and dust, thin like flour. Lot’s family is on the run. Avital Gad-Cykman

“But…Sodom and Gomorrah? Lot’s wife says through fast breathing.

“Hurry! Don’t look back. Look ahead,” Lot says. His instructions rain like the sulfur.

But she must. The past is still present, outlining a future. She needs to see the burning ruins to reinforce her resolve. And her daughters. They walk behind her, her past and present.

Also, curiosity is stronger than obedience.

She twists her neck ever so slightly. Screens of hair, fire and smoke filter the abandoned city.

Her daughters are safe, well-covered from head to toes. They look straight ahead through slits in their headscarves. 

She sees her city turn into history.

Her journey ends in a salt pillar.

Her name gone if it ever existed.

Curiosity and disobedience remain.

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Sara Lippmann—Avital Gad-Cykman, Left of Paradise, Eckleburg No. 22

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Avital Gad-Cykman

Avital Gad-Cykman’s flash col­lec­tion Life In, Life Out was pub­lished by Matter Press. Her sto­ries have been pub­lished in The Literary Review, Ambit, CALYX Journal, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, Prism International, Michigan Quarterly Review and else­where. They have also been fea­tured in antholo­gies such as W.W. Norton’s International Flash Anthology, Sex for America, Politically Inspired Fiction, Stumbling and Raging, Politically Inspired Fiction Anthology, The Flash, and The Best of Gigantic. Her work won Margaret Atwood Society Magazine Prize, was placed first in The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest, and was a finalist for Iowa Fiction Award for story collections. She lives in Brazil.