Poem: "So Often Alone"

Frida Kahlo painted
the world as she saw it,
the real and the surreal
tangled together on canvas,
impenetrable and inseparable.

She painted self-portraits over
and over again -- a third of her work --
because was so often alone, because
she was the person she knew best.

She painted beauty and ugliness,
love and betrayal and change.

She took the pain of her body
and gave it shape through the paint.

It is there in exposed hearts and
dripping blood, shattered columns
and wounded tables with human feet.

She fell into love and out of love
and then back into love again.

Sometimes she cut off her hair
to set herself free, changed clothes
to explore different aspects of herself,
the masculine and the feminine intertwined.

The footsteps of her life became
the strokes of a brush, a trail
laid out in colorful paint.

The trail still waits for eyes to follow.

* * *

Notes:

"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."
-- Frida Kahlo

"My painting carries with it the message of pain."
-- Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter.