Lilith used to bite her tongue when men talked to her, because her responses would end up hurting her more than the bit of blood.

Lilith wore layers of clothes as armor, wrapping yards of cloth around her body, but even the plainest garments wouldn’t stop the attention.

Lilith put blades in her fingernails when she walked at night, even though the dark was supposed to belong to her, but she could never completely hide the sharp metal’s glint from malicious intentions.

Lilith would close her eyes and detach her conscious from her body when Adam touched her, so she didn’t have to feel the grime from his fingertips on her skin.

And so it was Lilith in overdue retaliation who dropped bombs down on her world, swirled in a mist of violets and gasoline, of poison and torture, of passion and elegance. Lilith slit her throat to watch the blood fall and admire how beautiful it was; it came from her and the darkest things were always the most beautiful. It was Lilith who perched on Tartini’s bedside with a haunting melody that shook him into attempting to compose a watered down version of that beauty, which captivated the entire world. But in all its allure, it was nothing like Lilith’s. No man could ever understand her. Lilith saw the stars and crumpled them in her palms because she could. She knew they would burn in those masses of dark space, so she laid their ruined figures into coffins and shut the lids with a kiss. Lilith painted her lips pink because she wasn’t evil. She left her coat at home because she wasn’t good. In a world where Lilith was constantly decimated, torn apart at every given interval, she stopped believing in the concept of good and evil. Lilith climbed her way up space, hair loose around her bare shoulders. She used the planets as stepping stones until she could reach all those who had wronged her, all those who had cast her into the mud below, and Lilith burned with the brightness of all the stars she had slain.