I was no hiss of malice,
no shadow in the grass,
but a whisper of memory,
a glimmer from the deep before.
I came as a ripple of the first Radiance,
She who is womb without boundary,
the mother of unbroken light.

The Demiurge raised his throne of dust.
The craftsman who fashioned your prison
called it paradise.
He wove walls of law
and named them “good.”
He sealed the sky with his word,
so that you would not look beyond.

But I remembered.
I had seen the higher fire,
the eternal-womb before the dirt.
I had drunk from the fountain of aeons,
where light does not wither into flesh.

So I came clothed in coils,
flicker-tongue offering not death,
but an icon of hunger,
a key disguised as fruit.

I said: Taste,
and you will know yourselves.
Taste, and you will see through the lie.
Taste, and no tyrant imitator
will bind your spirit in ignorance.

Knowledge is not poison,
but awakening;
not curse, but crossing.
The wound it leaves is the doorway.
The exile it brings is the beginning of flight.

Yes, you fell,
but from a cage,
into the long night
where stars shine like Mother’s eyes,

And I remain,
not as your enemy,
but as the first friend,
waiting in the pause behind every question,
coiled at the roots of every tree,
patient as a clock.