I think our paths choose us as much as we choose them.
We can try all we want to be what we’re expected to be — to pray how they pray, moralize how they moralize, trust how they trust — but nature wins in the end.
I arrive to today’s lesson on my knees crying the only way I cry — bitterly and angrily, resentful and ablaze. Fur beneath me swallows my tears as Lilith before me swallows my fire.
I know better than to wish for the world to change. I know enough to know that is a trap and self-delusion.
I wish instead for things, frankly, that I don’t need. For strength, for fight, for puffed feathers to hide behind, for—
Her hand falls over my mouth.
Swollen eyes suddenly wide shut as she tells me something she’s only whispered up to now.
This was my body.
Tiny girl. Despicable hands. Flashes, screams, blood, silence.
Lilith tells me she is not immortal. She is aging. She will die, one day.
I do not know exactly what she is. How she began. How she rose. But rise she has done, all through time. A curiously strong restless spirit, arriving 5 thousand years later as the End of All Flesh — the indomitable force of destruction and void, incarnate.
But this is not how she began.
Look at it. At my body. Look.
I shut my eyes and see, and cry, my fire turned to sea. Her tininess. Her fragility.
This means nothing to her. She is before me, and before all the world, as the indomitable force of destruction and void, incarnate.
Do you understand?
I do not. I see, but I do not understand. But I promise her I will continue coming to learn.
My paper finishes burning. Whisps of smoke rise towards sunset.
The owls stir and swoon to their lovers. She accepts. The void always does.
Sleep.
