Lilith, be gone.

Your scrubbed tumbler is still sticky with whisky, lipstick rim. You snatch babies and make the monitors hum. You raise the thermostat.

What lends you latitude, hissing? We are in tin moments, rusty whistle. What coils in your hair? What tooth-prints were cast from your own cavities?

You blow gently on his ear while he sleeps, soft supple fold. You take back ligaments, reclaim sinews. Busk in the slice of street-light.

What remakes you when you are erased? Kettle-womb, pliant web. What laces your genetic code?

Quiet now. He’s sleeping on the next pillow, under the stretched coverlet. What’s mine is mine. What’s yours is porous as bone, fragile as marrow, mutable and narrow. Veins snake across your ribcage, shard and splinter in the moonglow.

Rock-a-bye, breath-stealer. Retreat.

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