Tiranía

Grief, you tyrant.
You hold me captive with memories that ache, the profound loss coming in waves that won’t relent.
Still, I return to you willingly
because within your grasp
is the only place
she still feels close.
I wear her lipstick like armor,
the same shade that once kissed my cheek with a blessing.
Now it blooms in my lips,
as inheritance.
Its color bleeds,
softly into the cracks of time,
reminding me:
she lived,
loved
and left, 
traces of herself
in everything that still shines red.

Grief, you may hold me captive,
but she’s the reason I stay.

Transmuting grief into art is like being forced to eat glass. But I did it. Just in time for her birthday, the first one without her. Cruel but necessary. The work wanted to be many things at once, like a metaphor of grief itself, and I let it be.

Technically speaking, it was a difficult session.
For one, I don’t do self-portraits well. In 20 years of being a photographer, I’ve never been able to accomplish self portraiture with the devotion it demands. I only have them if I’m finishing a roll of film or see a mirror, usually taken on the iPhone. Then there’s the quality of the work. I had an idea for it but it required patience. I was manually focusing each frame and running back within 5 seconds to capture it. Add the parenting component of it all that is the soundtrack to my life and the act in itself feels more like walking a tightrope while juggling. Oh, an time! The social construct invented to haunt me, yeah that. I had only an hour to accomplish the task. I harnessed the power of muscle memory to remember some old modeling techniques to contort my body at the right angle while not moving far enough from the focal plane because, I’m manually focusing folks. I’m sure there are infinite way to efficiently execute the vision but this was the way I knew how to. Maybe if I was better at self-portraits perhaps it would’ve been easier. It wasn’t. Toes cramped, breath held for far too long and the kids asked for things they’ve never asked before. I’m quite satisfied with it to tell you the truth. That’s grief, this time around, pulling me back within while life continues on outside. It’s so far different from the wavelengths of grief I’ve experienced before. And it has weighed heavy on me to create from this place of surrender to it. First, the poems came violently. Then the movie scenes in between the poems and the photos. The photos are always present, so it never arrives early or too late. I’m letting the work be what it wants to be. It chooses to surface in a way I’ve never experienced before. I’ll leave you with that, afraid to ruin it with overexplanation.