I Asked the Alchemist

How do I change
white into silver?
He said add gray
and adjust the light.

That’s how I fell
from my ladder
into the ruins of a grotto,
with my neck and shoulder
and elbow burning,
unable to move, wondering
if another silver seeker
would find me as I found—
my eye close to ground—
this tiny ladder of wild lilies
making their own white light.

Sara Backer lives in New Hampshire surrounded by pine, oak, birch, beech, and maple trees. Her chapbook, Bicycle Lotus, won the 2015 Turtle Island Poetry Award. Watch for poems forthcoming in Silver Blade and Strange Horizons.