Lilith

She arrives as the sun reflects knives of light
off window panes. The day is bright and the lady

is no demon of the night, only a tall woman wearing
leather boots with thick soles. She bends to tie

worn laces, traces my office with her eyes. She finishes,
nods, straddles a chair in a pose that might be sexual

except that it is not. Her plaid shirt is missing
one button, exposing a pale cotton undershirt. I want her

hair to be long and raven dark, to fall in waves across
her shoulders. It is brown and wrapped sturdy in a knot. Her nails

are short, her fingers calloused. She rests her chin on one
hand, ringless. The skin is earth color, dirt color, mud, soil, growth

color. She stares until I shift in my seat and then she
smiles. She says, “Your kids are grown. You did it. What

now?” When I dreamt of her, she was the wind, she was the sky
studded with stars, like gems to line her ears and nose, to glint beneath

her lip. She was sensual, dripping with honey and beckoning, hips
rhythmic with the reckoning, and I stood on the tip of a white

crescent moon, held out my hands, and she said, “Jump.” I am
not asleep the day snow falls and my office fills with a woman

said to have come before Eve, but she didn’t. She tells me she came
only when Eve embraced herself, accepted Wisdom’s invitation to fly

free, her fruitfulness more than a field for others to till and toil. Eve left
the garden, shed the glory, whipped up a wind to take her

on a ride. Eve is Lilith or Lilith is Eve. We are the same woman here
inside, and this is not my dream. My eyes are wide, my heart’s tattoo

drums so loud the world can hear, and she is standing up, reaching out
her broad-knuckled hand and she doesn’t say jump. She says fly.