Is this insomnia?

Happy birthday Frida Khalo. What, genuine goddess, kind of weighted advice would you give to me in such little words. Your words you painted..The ones that revealed your heart, open and dangling; had them sown into fabrics generations later, had them resonate through time and space and still confronted with question as if language no longer existed, and only in them one finds the puzzles of the stars and death still.

Now they stream. How do you calculate the speed of the internet? How could I explain to you what powers we have now. You don't even know it, but your selfie is all over my and my closest friends' world, and I imagine you cringing, and drinking, and crying, and celebrating all at once the elaborate possibilities of the artist today.

I send you my sleepless questions through the air hoping that maybe what I have come to learn about thought, matter, and physics could be real. That maybe we'll be shaking together in this weird line of history from either fear, or shock, and still wanting yet another drink before another reach of a pencil.

Would you come marching with me? Would you tell me to turn back the 170 miles I have only a few hours ago driven and dreamed through, announced my biggest goals out loud to- felt my heart again in a flurry at the thought that, yes, it could all be possible if you actually believe in something outside of your self.

But somewhere in all that clear, innocent, prayer there comes an incoherence- so enveloping that one is stunned and left without the desire for dreams, the desire for rest, or sleep, or dare I even say peace.

Dear Frida- I would turn back to Oakland, but I haven't a degree for which to provide me a "proper" job. I would turn back to Oakland but I haven't the means to keep my own bed there, my own stove to share my food with others, my own easels or instruments for which to keep my wordless prayers amassed.
I would turn back to Oakland but every time I am near home I fall in love all over again and in me grows both courage and a deep, harrowing fear that I may go through everything I never thought I could again.

Can I be more honest and say that for so many reasons I retreat to nature so flexibly because in this current society, I trust nature and animals more than I do some of the people I share my blood with. More than I do some of the people I have exposed my heart to, more than those I have spent so many words on just to feel like the language we once shared is now obsolete.

In my head you are stern and lovely. Fierce but vulnerable always to your spirit and the parts of you that ache for a type of love that only you and them will ever know.

You are with your brushes and no bullets. No glass broken, only vases near you filled with flowers. Only fires atop white wax held by you hands, illuminating all of the fallen souls' and yours and mine and everyone's path.

In my head you are with them all marching. You are with the people in parade, in protest, in accordance with their thoughts which fueled their blood and limbs to gather and stand before the testament of so-called time, singing out one big idea in unison that for some reason, not all the earth can yet comprehend.

Would you call me a coward?

Should I paint?

Should I scream?

Should I try to sleep again?

I left befo re the news reached my mind. I checked out of the city before I knew.

Happy birthday, Frida Khalo.

Please, forgive me.