POETRY
“Ode to My Phone Wallpaper,” read by Sofia Tantono.
Ode to My Phone Wallpaper
On Twitter, I saw this painting of Mary Magdalene going up to heaven, carried on a sheet
by three cherubs, their little faces captivated upwards as if there were nothing else in the
world but them, the Apostle to the Apostles and that realm above. I couldn’t help but think
about how Mary Magdalene, save for her wind-toyed blonde hair, looked a lot like me: tired
eyes, tiny sagging boobs and a pillowy stomach, hugged by rolls and slightly jutting
outwards. Especially the stomach. It was like hearing the Gospel: you can’t see that kind of
thing and go on living your life as if nothing happened, as if something at the core of you
didn’t just change forever, waking from a long, murky hibernation of darkness. I finally
understood that I didn’t have to attend the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Calorie-
Counting, taking a communion of pills and some shitty health shake, a sacrificial lamb on its
altar of weighing scales, the hours of exercise needed to burn off bread and wine rattling off
my tongue like the Our Father. I only have to be enough for the God who made me, the gates
of whose Kingdom are not built like the entrance to Zhao Lang’s restaurant.
Sofia Tantono lives in Jakarta, Indonesia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Trash Wonderland, The Aurora Journal, MASKS and others. Outside of writing, she was the curator for Yuwana Zine’s fifth issue and is the fiction editor of Koening Zine. Find her on Instagram @sofias.writing and at sofiatantono.wordpress.com.
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Artwork: Mary Magdalen Raised by Angels (c. 1616) by Giovanni Lanfranco. Public Domain.
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 