demeler.

you already know lilith’s story.

everyone knows lilith’s story.

& yet, somehow no one knows lilith’s story.

ladies & gentlemen: the problem.

& so she takes to weaving it from bits of tangled string unthreaded from swallows’ homes

with knitting needles newly found & freely flexed,

sharpened to a point by reality & the doings of man & the prefix wo-.

there’s much more to come,

but not much to be done.

& lilith knows it.

cleaning the kitchen again while watching all the counts rise,

she laments the theory of the first pancake

& offers a prayer to st. jude.

omsvep.

mildred has a box.

it’s a big box.

mildred’s box is filled with stones.

there’s a lot of stones.

sometimes, she throws them.

others, she fills her pockets with them before going on long jogs.

& still others, she counts them.

they’re magical stones - overflowing with conundrums.

mildred hates them, but uses them for ID at bars sometimes.

they stay hidden under her bed, tucked safely away in their ebony square,

until someone walks into the room.

then she begins the ‘displaying them proudly with seeming reluctance’ game.

she’s quite good.

yes, mildred has a box of rocks.

or does the box of rocks have mildred?