At first glance, Gerry Stewart’s “Soap” reads like a portrait of an impossibly polished woman: lemon tea, blonde hair, blue eyes, silken clothes, a golden child, sharp talk in business and bed. But the title hints that she is not quite a real person; she is a figure in a soap opera, watched daily by the speaker. Her qualities pile up like plot points—unmarried, then wed, “unavailable but saleable”—attractive yet slightly hollow.
The speaker’s relationship with her lasts “one hour a day,” the length of a television episode. That hour can feel like everything, nothing, or love, an honest description of the strange pull of a fictional life. The mood is dreamy and wistful, with a cool awareness of how glossy images can feel intimate without ever being real.