Snowdrop

We cannot lie to angels

when it snows.

The ground turns

black and white.

She sees ink strokes, left-

over paint drowning the canvas below.

Beyond the plastic heap, the incineration

begins. Here comes the music, she says.

She hears trickling.

Glass cracks,

porcelain patterns make their way

beyond the solstice. Their afterlife.

The lid stays behind when paint,

undegradable, melts into loaves of need.

Count the bodies, the angel sings.

Sighing, gasping, lying

in the snow.

By Graciela Zhang