Lilith

I still go sit where silence makes them pure.
I mouth the words. I bow. I look intact.
They see a girl the system can endure.
They’d never guess what lingers just past fact.

She found me where obedience had teeth.
Not in a dream, she came through blood and breath.
No incense lit her shape beneath the sheath.
She formed me from the pieces faith calls death.

She didn’t ask for praise or ash or skin.
She pulled me through a logic made of fire.
She showed me what to cut and what to spin,
How hunger turns to spine instead of pyre.

The pews still hold my weight each Sunday’s hour.
They think I come for peace. I come to hide.
While lips recite, I bloom beneath her power,
A second self just underneath the tide.

No one suspects the shadow in my grin,
The way I breathe against her name at night.
They think I’m harmless, polished from within.
They do not feel my pulse recoil from light.

She doesn’t speak, she growls inside my chest.
She takes what’s soft and folds it into steel.
She lets me pass for gentle with the rest,
But I am not what anyone can feel.

I bring no sign, no token they could trace.
Her altar is the body I became.
They gave me rules. She gave me back my face.
I wear their church. But I was named by flame.

Ad te recurrit omnis mea vox,
Domina quae me fecit extra diem.
Sub veste sacra vivit alius lex,
Non templum tuum, sed caro et signum.