I can say I didn’t kiss a stone frog
before I entered their blue house
for the third time in seven years.
Was there a plea before I said
“Do I dare sit in the ghostly chair
in a big room of unnatural things,
hearing ‘How shall I make you cry?’”
Her warmth could be in raw wood
& metal remembering her shape,
or the true weight of Diego’s arms
around her, a dance to take away
hurt in memory, as a double wing
revealed the Aztec temple I’d mount
if I stood up straight. But to descend
was to sit down fast on my backside.
Did I know balance from how Frida
had risen to see her double world?
Yes, she did not come to say, “Look,
I am dreams painted onto the skin,”
as she stood in a looking glass. Love
rose before her—woman or man—
as one’s body leaned on a promise,
outside the green house where her
lover, Leon Trotsky, was murdered.
For her, an idea or a hue were flesh.
Yes, as a young woman who knew
steel, she had been deeply hurt.
Now, one could gaze at her studio
at the end of the bridge high-up
across from Diego, & one could see
her in a wheelchair rolling across.
Now, ask why he sold her painted
visions to his rich lover, as if time
could let go of her mother earth.
She could also paint a dark, salty
blood of surreal skies & wet soil.
Did she brood over dewy blooms
with a knowledge of her ancients,
saying, I do not wish to see my body
forever pierced by some iron spear.
She painted mother-wit lying on
her back, casting it all in a mirror,
but was it her or Diego declaring,
“I feel I am murdered by love?”
Copyright © 2025 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 30, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
