(porcelain erasure, after Cynthia Cruz)

A Califormia of snow
Of illness. I throned myself in the white
Noise of its silence and watched the world
Fell away. All the silver flickerings of possibility
Going out like the sound of
Clicking into the distance. It is almost
The end. Anesthesia of medicine and me,
Beneath its warm bell of milk. My
Microscopic: a locked window overlooking the
Sea. An atlas of the disaster: an un-lit hall and
A shift in the waves
Porcelain. Michelle, my little sister, silent
A weed. I took all the things I loved and
Smashed them one by one

Note: An erasure of Cynthia Cruz’s poem ‘January’, from Ruin (Alice James Books, 2006).