Kahlo's Passion; The Art of Pain

Decades apart, lands away, your determination met my grimaced smile with a tear so heavy I felt it bruise my shoulder. The agony of chronic pain held us separate from the world, buried alive in a place only those with eyes of amber can understand. Your skin so warm, mine so pale lift our brushes in rebellion. Entangled hearts yearn like a lost lover to be found.

It was you who had the tequila first, I stuck to wine. Deeply set in our brains the pain pushed through our focus, often breaking our composure, afflicting our relationships.

Did you ever feel understood? We all know about Diego and the emotional shrapnel he embedded into your heart so arrogantly; I have shrapnel, too. Your black eyebrows and swooped up hair are so lovely to adore, yet the mirror you faced was not at all pretty. My reflection in photos, especially in the sunlight shows a strained smile interpreted as anger or disgust when I am suffering most. I know that is how you felt, too. I want to wipe my fingers across the same pallet with you, feel the oily, wet, array of colors, then smooth them across our faces. Perhaps we will find some laughter for a moment in my dreams.

My spine twists and throbs, my neck’s insatiable pain breaks my promises to myself and to the art of simply living into shreds of ripped canvas.

I have been asked, “Why do you paint such sad faces?”. I know you would not need an explanation dear Frida. Through the dried bones you have been freed from the life I am still living yet your spirit carries me through the darkest days. I want to dance, oh how I loved to dance. Sometimes, like you, when I have inebriated my soul, I get up, swirl to the music only to flounder later in my bed; my eyes resign to the ceiling to pay for my attempt to break through the caged life I despise.

My ceiling isn’t painted, nor does a canvas hang over me, yet when I lay here, I always turn to you and share my ideas, my fears and yes, my sadness. We who suffer are told that acceptance will help us in our plight; did it help you, Frida? I am a fury of emotions and dislike the unsurmountable advice tossed to me by herds of doctors who only study and read about people like you and me. No one knows more than the ones swaddled in viscous cloth, screaming to be fed relief like an orphaned baby.

Collars, braces, canes, wheelchairs, rolling walkers and crutches, I just long to crush them all into a fist of steel and punch through the heavens wailing for Morpheus to drop down and soften each cell.

My words are impotent if not read, for how can I retrieve them to explain how I linger in dread with the same secret sacrifice daily as you once did?

Tell me, Señora Frida how did you survive? How was it to die? Did you hover above your home and room with wings and songs of rejoice? Did you feel cheated or grateful?

Each part of your body was left hanging for the world to absorb, repel, or covet. I truly wish I could keep you all to myself, never share any of our forced bravery; we could unleash our separate realms of time and settle into one imperfect understanding. We could dance all night and swallow red wine, tequila, and blow smoke from hand rolled cigarettes into the faces of the ones who say they understand. They don’t.

The paintings I made and sold were beautiful or simply trite. No one wants faces of despair hanging in their lofts. I don’t want a "Diego" to parasitize my life’s journey. I will always choose you Frida, for your moods were like mine, your storms in life make my pain fall to the floor, just as we would if we were dancing on a hot summer night, under the stars and golden moon.

Our time will come; I believe it’s true. I will be released from my body and you will take my hand and together we will paint the sky with oily, wet fingers draping the clouds with dusty hues of who we once were.