The starting point
Was mystical.

I could feel something bright
As it left the body.

What I wouldn’t give
To go back—

To my tiny, almost
Russian childhood:

Mother in her crimson gown and stage
Make up: baby

Blue glitter shadow and her long
Beautiful arms

Changing me into her small
Blonde princess.

When the wheel moves by, night
Is gone.

This life is gone, again.

There will be no other
Life, other than the sweet
Lavender, sweet

Blossoming dream
Of this one.

Cynthia Cruz is the author of three collections of poems: Ruin, published by Alice James Books, The Glimmering Room (Stahlecker Series Selections), published by Four Way Books, and Wunderkammer, also from Four Way Books, forthcoming in October of this year. Her essays and art reviews have been published in The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, and Hyperallergic. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony as well as a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.