by Roselle Farr
The Wrong Wife
A history with Retrato de Lupe Marín (1938) by Diego Rivera.
8
Your hands sit strong before me in that dark museum sideroom.
Hallowed and hushed and carpeted, I am held by you.
Your husband’s disloyal white calla lilies, consumed brown hips stretch across
outer walls where others worship the spectacle. The docent says,
he painted his wife’s hands like this. Note their size and their strength.
My mind can’t let go of those hands.
To love a woman for her strength.
29
I pilgrimage to Coyoacán to visit your Casa Azul
in service to a self I am always becoming, embodying
an animal uncompromising, an adherent enthused, a child
escaped. To see your clothes, your kitchen, to visit your bed,
the walls you touched and items you placed just so.
On my way, I stumble on a man.
I fall in love on the way to your house.
The day is heady, distracted with
the kind of romantic love you worshipped.
I marry him and imagine your benediction:
love is life, love is pain.
Not knowing the choosing I was doing, I let my hands sweep along
the riverbank instead. Roots drift through through my fingers.
My face leans back, laughs joyful as I slip downstream.
Come together with eyes wide open.
I do.
43
I open a box, feel the old, fusty familiar on fingertips.
Inside, folded, amongst the things I brought
along with me is me.
The dust of evaporated dreams, residues, previously
pure sit heavy on my chest.
Frida, I glance up, remembering all I had
forgotten. I search archives for the hands that held me:
images empty of them until I seek sideways.
There is not enough air.
Those strong hands were never yours.
They belonged to an earlier wife.
The docent had just said, wife.
I realise it now. I chose the wrong wife.
Those clasped, stacked fingers, muscle, that love of strength never belonged
to you. I inscribed them onto your body, like you and the world were
wont to do. A retrato created by a mind drowning
for someone to love like I loved you.
I learn about Lupe, her fingers again entwine into me, her square shoulders, her
abundant gown all draw my young soul in. She made banned books, daughters
an old age.
I feel humiliation now, for the easy icon worship, for
the forever ink carved into me, for the wife
I believed I was becoming.
I grapple now with this error in narrative, a mistake of decades.
Centuries and lifetimes, not mine, but mine again cede
to this (oh god) the oldest trick in history:
I chose a man to choose a life.
It escapes my fingers, tumbling to the floor.
Did her fate catch in her throat like mine does?
Did yours?
Britt Doughty-Godchaux lives on an island off the west coast of Scotland with sundry mammals, mainly human and canine. Originally from the US, she has been writing since she became literate, but at 43, this is her first published poem. Her previous work has included pizza delivery, short fiction, substitute teaching, mental health and enrichment work with children and transcribing the Bible in Igbo, Currently, she works as a union steward in the NHS and is studying to become a counsellor. Britt enjoys exploring the condition of existence through the written word even when, as in the instance of this poem, she discovers a trope of her life is based on a misremembered and transposed moment. Britt is a member of the Flaming Flower Society.
Roselle Farr is a full time Business Analyst, in her spare time she is an amateur photographer, but has also started to explore the world of abstract painting. She loves being creative and a selection of her photos can be found at her Instagram page – rosellemarie_photos.