16. Lilith Walking

November 2021

Every muscle yells at me as I slog up another hill, slowing my pace to finish my run, having pursued every suburban mountain I could find along the way. I’ve taken to running the hills in the neighboring town to try to prevent myself from losing interest in the activity. The extra hills that I push up are meant to distract and punish me after last night’s transgression. Not to be repeated. I pause to stretch against a fence. There. I’ve gotten that out of my system now. I’ve chanted these words silently throughout my day as if repeating it will make them true.

Henry checked in with me early in the morning and asked me to visit his store. I demurred, prolonging my decision.

A woman turns a corner and walks toward me. A petite bottled blonde with long wavy hair in a black dress that bubbles out halfway down her thighs. Tattoos wind up her left leg, disappearing under her skirt and traveling south to dip below her black boots, leather mingling with black-inked snakes and dragons. The snakes match those that wind around her arms. A pint-sized Lilith covered in armor. When she is close enough to hear, I smile and wave, the Midwestern Greeting of strangers. She looks at my eyes and nods. I notice how dark hers are and notice the ring of blue around them.

“Watch where he goes,” she says, just after passing me by.

“Sorry?”

“Watch that hole,” she said, pausing and turning her head back to me. “Around the corner there,” she adds, pointing her finger towards the sidewalk. “Big pothole in the ground. Almost tripped over it myself.”

“Thanks,” I reply, noticing how blue her eyes look now, bright and clear.

“Sneaky fuckers, aren’t they? Keep your eyes open,” she grins, then walks away.

Curiosity gets me, and I walk to the corner, turning to look for a pothole, but find only a crack in the sidewalk, thin and flat enough to not be a problem. I walk further but see nothing in my path, save for sticks and spiders, as I take the long way back to my car. It’s then that I notice a tiny spider on my thigh and bend to move it gently onto the grass. It crawls towards a weeping willow. I watched for signs of the woman as I drove home. I did not see her but I looked for her in the faces that I passed. I wrote her words and the change in her eyes off as imagined and moved back into the routine of the day.

The clouds had turned from white to grey, and a few crows gathered on the trees outside our house. I watched them swoop from the sky in curving arcs. “Coronis brings the rain,” I whisper into my tea, leaving my phone alone for the rest of the night, remembering the old Greek myths.

I dreamt in Old Norse and heard drums beating in the wind. Mothers chased their children across a wheat field. Ravens flew over their heads, there to guard them. The birds sang sounds that came from the backs of their throats, deeper and more sonorous than crows. Everything moved fast. The birds’ wings, the feet of the children running, the mothers as they followed them away from the drums. The noise woke me in the early morning, and I climbed out of bed to look at the crescent moon, waxing and silver in the darkness of autumn. The snow came in the afternoon, a sleety kind of first snow for the season, keeping us inside. As if to hold us still. I listened and built pillow forts and danced indoors with my girls while Adam poured himself into chores and disappeared into his phone, joining us when we pulled him into our world.