More on: Michael White

That first morning, I remember
clinging to a table’s edge—
both legs jackhammering the white

linoleum floor tiles—praying for
my benzodiazepine to finally,
finally kick in.

If the painting-within-the-painting, hanging on the wall behind the standing woman— with its sinners wailing at Christ’s feet on Judgment Day— if that might be one way of looking at it, then the woman herself, who half obscures the painting, is another. All we know of her is what we see: how—weightless, effortless as flame—she…