Sheila Black

LAS DOS FRIDAS OR SCRIPT FOR THE ERASED*

As if she was severed from me in the surgery
itself, I immediately began to refer to her in the
third person—the girl, the girl-with-the-torqued-
legs, the girl who could not walk without
staggering, crip girl who was and was not me.
I pictured her peering in windows, appariating
in mirrors. Invisible on any corner. She knew
the color of rain against smoked glass, blew
bubbles at the fish in their silent aquariums. She
was me before I became so fallen. Sneaking
Salem cigarettes with the other girls on the fourth
floor bathroom. Trying so hard to fit in you could
see that desire—a sheen on my skin. The year I
learned to walk again—a wheelchair, crutches, crutches
discarded, everyone said how it was a miracle, so
wonderful, such a great, great thing, as if I could now
be welcomed into the club of people. A door closed
somewhere, and she was behind it. I pictured her
staring down at her left hand, uncurling the palm
to study the lines. I pictured her building a map, a
way out of this place and back to me. And when I
first saw the painting, Las Dos Fridas, their fingers
laced together, the blood line leaking between
them, I knew what that picture meant: Here she is.
Look at her; Look at her and love us both.

*Previously published in Bone and Tissue.

Sheila Black's poems have appeared in Diode, Puerto del Sol, Blackbird, and Poet Lore among other journals. She is the author of two full-length collections Love/Iraq (2009, CW Press) House of Bone (2007, CW Press), and a chapbook How to be a Maquiladora (2007, Main Street Rag). She was born with x-linked hypophosphatemia also known as XLH.