Frida

I see myself in the shop window
my quiet knees, my hair rain-fluffed.
Scrabbling at scraps of Frida’s broken body her
twitching, stretch, her
ripping
the way love opened her up opened me into
backwards dedications
to “My Diego”
nobody will ever know how much I love--

Don’t document it, don’t! His
drumbeat on you
Dear--
Distraction

I wander through the city; faces doing breast-stroke
ghosts swimming in a slobbering lake the rain still skittish
Telling me that she was skewered and I was too
he was her second great accident.
Ophelia, drowned and Frida
shattered.

I see myself in a dirty puddle facedown
my ghostly floating
my charcoal crumbling fingers
smearing warpaints and waiting.
A clock sewn into the back of my throat and
eight corsets
ticking ticking.
An accident opened her up so time slowed
She had two big accidents and I’m someone else’s smaller one.

I can’t help but feel a
gaping gaping absence of a
Dear
Dear
Diego to backwards-dedicate to.

Artwork by Frida Kahlo