Flores y Huesos (Flowers and Bones)
after ‘The Dream (The Bed)’ by Frida Kahlo
My daughter turns pale at the sight
of you.
By which I mean
what you offer of yourself.
By which I mean
how each stroke of paint you embody
and clothe yourself in
strips you to the bone.
Why is a skeleton grinning above
the bed? Whose is it? She asks
after the white gleam
of my bones rises from my bed,
skin wasting away to reveal
that secret smile beneath.
My daughter has seen such dark marring
a world of cloud.
By which I mean
what I paint in words.
By which I mean
how we both illuminate our pain
against unnerving beauty.
Why are the vines taking over
her body? What’s happening? She asks
for the earth to explain itself,
to parse the process anew. She asks
the right questions
but doesn’t want the answers.
You’re scary, she adds
to you, to me, to the skeleton
inside herself. Her whole body
shuddering a rebellion
against the second flowering
of a body after death.
Who is the skeleton floating
above the bed? She asks,
but she already knows.
published in All the Lives We Ever Lived (Volume II), Lighthouse Writers Workshop, 2022
