In the end, it wasn’t the sea rising that swallowed them up. 
Or unbearable heat. 
It wasn’t acid rain or
Charred forests that spelled their doom. 

When she was a little girl,
The Dead Sea was some distant nightmare place
Unattached from real time and space. 
Inhabited by ghosts
A warning to the living.

Her mother, careful of her imagination,
Smiled into existence a silly sea
Where she could float
With no effort at all,
Hot, yes, but not so dead.

When she grew up, the Dead Sea sat 
In a jar by the bathtub. 
A plastic tub, rather, 
Filled with soothing comfort
After a long day at the office. 

No, in the end, it wasn’t a 
Nuclear apocalypse that did them in. 
Or the mass extinctions. 
Or the soil collapse. 
They just
Ran out of salt. 

Isn’t that funny? 

Those goofy glass viles that 
Adorned every table top. 
So easy to take for granted.
This substance, so natural, so
Ubiquitous.
That it never really made the front page? 

No. Roves of armed men
Shooting up the scorched earth
Didn’t bring the end. 
Marked it, perhaps, but didn’t 
Hasten its coming. 
They just ran out of salt. 

The simple things
They probably just forgot
Were important.
Forgot how to notice what 
Meant enough to be preserved.
And once they did (notice), 
No salt. 

They forgot the medicine for the wounds. 
The salts to wake them up,
Shock them back to seeing. 
Forgot the healing it brought the blood. 
The cellular revival. 

Of course they remembered 
When the loss hit their tongues
The flavor dull, no more.
But they remembered too late. 
After the salt was all consumed. 
All used up in baths that brought comfort.
Food that soared their blood pressure. 
Used up, but not appreciated. 

The little girl woman, in her final thoughts, 
Before fatigue gave way to quaking, 
Felt embarrassed about the bath salts
That she’d not paid much attention
Either to the time, or the sea, 
Or her people.

Of course, she’d cared for comfort
Made sure material needs were met. 
And kept up with the news. 
Oil spills, political shenanigans, 
School shootings and the like.
But somehow, she’d missed the simpler things 

She wasn’t afraid of running out of salt
Before it disappeared. 
She hardly marked her loss (or never developed) 
Her ability to recognize
What warranted preserving.

She picked up her anti-anxiety meds like clockwork.
But forgot there was simpler medicine
She’d focused on attaining the sweetest things.
And lost the nuanced possibilities of her tongue.

Before the quaking 
Gave way to nothing
She thought back to the Dead Sea
And wondered
Where the destruction/How the destruction 
Came to be.
Was it in morbid imagination? 
Or silly simplification? 

She thought of Lot’s wife. 
And the consequence of looking back. 
On those people, who she loved…
Paying real attention
To someone else’s suffering.

Was it punishment? 

Becoming a pillar of earth?
Becoming what allows 
Good things to be preserved?
Becoming medicine?
Becoming flavor?

In the end, they’d just run out of salt.
She thought, 
I think I was a wife once.