inspired by Enid Dame and her poem Lilith

i walk the streets that you used to walk when you were young.
they’re still filled with the ear-splitting traffic of streetcars and taxis,
and the heavy footstep of man
as he trudges along in the gray sludge of old February ice.

i spy on him sometimes, mama.
i watch him slouch against the ice fire breath of the winds
huffing down his neck.
i peek around the lamp-post and watch him shuffle against the dreary gale
that blows him backwards for every step he takes,
just like how he was blown from Eden.
i saw him mama.
the man who threw you out.
the man who abandoned you.
i watch him walk every day,
he seems lost.

it’s cold here mama.
this place is nothing like the paradise you described to me.
you told me that you lived in heaven
and that you were loved,
just as much as you said you loved me.

oh mama, why did we come here?
it rains all the time.
i cried so much in the
apartment you managed to find
on the corner between that deli shop
and the pharmacy owned by a
man who never stopped smoking.
you held me close and said,
“shh baby, it’s alright.
we’ll get through this together.”

the day you died,
i cried like I did when I was in that apartment,
only this time,
there was no one to hold me close
and whisper in my ear.
mama, Lilith,
you’re gone.
history has never remembered you.
you’ve been erased
by the broad sweep of mankind’s hate.
they don’t want to remember you.
but I do,

i do.

i whisper your name to the trees on fifth street
and look at the stars on faded concrete steps at night,
trying to find you among the
constellations
of the history you should have been
a part of.