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ISSN: 1941-4137 |
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Volume Six Issue One |
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Voice Lessons: de la Casa Azul Dear Frida, today I come again and there are guards at the entrance. Someone asks for a ticket; someone else wants my backpack of words, and this after the subway and much walking (no trolleys) and so much interrogating sun, sky sharp blue as your walls' false protection. Everything costs but it's payable and necessary, even if, inside, the paintings are out of reach; the plump mirror cushioned bed, beyond fingering; rickety chair you rolled in, rolled up to the desk, cordoned off. Everything here makes my eyes wet and swell. They can't take it in enough, but the guards say you can't go back, retrace your steps, can't get a reverse perspective. To see any of this, any of these discarded costume vestiges of who you were and not wholly, I have to start over. I almost weep, inhale it, tired of starting over, of being eluded. The interior garden oppresses: lush with bougainvillea, cats on the prowl, ice cream is offered, souvenirs pretend homage and the impalpable presses like sweat, like some fusion evaporated from falsely ancient statuary into my skin. Passion, passion, a blue dish on yellow tile screams. I feel my heart as the grotesque organ it is, beating outside my body. I see in the wooden door I have to leave through, your eyebrows mirroring your mouth's wry smile, and a scoff — you can't save me, you who learned to save nothing. |
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