2019

This is a portrait of my mother painted just after her death. She was a severe alcoholic and was houseless for many years before she passed. Writing and painting her are the ways in which I have been able to process my grief & understand her more fully as a multi- layered & complicated, human at the intersection of being my mama.
I wrote this poem as a pair to the painting:

Home is the bed that I was born on.
When time was patient.

When there was no one else.

She was no dragon
no scales
or fire.
Warm belly, heavy breast, fine hair.
Soft,
gentle,
heart shaped face.

Home is my mother.
Her face,
still.

I try and I try and I try to see it.
And some days I can.