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You come at night
making the long passage up my stairs,
climbing as if upon an earlier woman,
the one that came before the very first wife;
had she stayed with you, you swear, you’d still be
deep in paradise.

I am not bone of your bone, am formed
from the snake, the apple,
not your simple rib, gently calcified by time,
leaning against the wall of home,
anchored in the armchair.

My thighs are scissors shredding
another woman’s life and with the same stroke
cutting me off from the quiet in the room.
I choose to harm her. Every lover is Lilith.