Wrap a Rock in Copper, Call it a Crystal and Say it Heals - Lili Ward

I saw a photo of Sarah Jessica Parker reading 'The 120 Days of Sodom' and allowed myself to recall the time my friend confided in me that she recurrently dreamt of Sarah Jessica Parker eating her out in the front display of a mattress shop.

Fourty winks, Fourty days and Fourty nights. I didn't drink for 243 days, along with a still-bloated gut and the body type of a hungry toddler, I am nursing the fear that all awaiting only makes it sweeter. I am drunk to fulfill the new holy trinity;

Becoming the wife, the bitch and the keyboard warrior.

There comes a point in every young girls life in which she must carve her own ladder of virtues in an arrowed heart onto local wood. Alongside his virtues, John wrote multiple works of wisdom to give instruction for his children and their holy lives. So as a teenager I obsessively wrote in grey lead: my ladder of divine descent. These virtues consist of thirty one speeches (one more than John) 

Each speech resembling a step toward the heavenly place, His virtues: like rungs of a ladder, Mine: like the steps up to my sisters bunk bed. I am far enough up the steps to make out her scrawny shape under the floral doona cover, 16 virtues yet to fulfill and the plague seems to have softly begun. Chronology is forgotten and the locusts are the first.

I am finely chopping celery in the brandished sink at my supermarket job, I am calculated and in my delusion I am far too invested in the well being of this gourmet produce store. I am day dreaming of the book of Deuteronomy, how applicable, that I will sow much more seed than I will ever be able to harvest. All that is plentiful will be eaten by the locusts.

It doesn't flinch as I lift its cardboard shelter, it is antisocial but unafraid. I the social creature, joke with Tom and Andy from the produce department as we watch it jump, three grown ups laughing in matching aprons. I joke fluently with the boys but I am afraid, I turn the tap far left and watch its fluttering jig slow.

What is the karmic retribution for boiling a locust?

My boyfriend sent me a direct message at 10:03pm, a conspiratorial video, I believe he is convinced the locusts are either 1). extra terrestrial or 2). related somehow to the pentagon. It is a starless night, and I hear these are the perfect conditions to consume conspiracy theories via YouTube. I emotively react to his message, I joke with the boys but I am afraid. It is catholic guilt long after my faith resigned, it's the urge to collect your bloodied teeth and lick the pulpy divots they leave long after believing in the tooth fairy.

Lili Grace Ward