Jennifer Fendya
“And then…”
Inspiration piece
Jenny Forrester
Response
She had her way with me in ways I didn’t want but agreed to via silence and acceptance.
Acquiescences. Resignations.
You know. You’ve been there, tilted and painted, disguised. But also expressing yourself, attempting to and everyone says you’ve hoarded or taken or appropriated. Depending.
All this water and light and I remember an old boyfriend said he was Italian by way of his grandparents’ migration.
He said, “I’m Italian,” when he was too rough with me. He said, “What’s the Italian version of foreplay?” and he’d snap his fingers, the signal for a woman (at that time, me) to walk over. Fonze-like. “It’s cultural,” he said. I was bound to a silence in observation of the vastness of history.
She said, “People always let me down,” but her crowdfunding got her a trip across the globe, new clothes, new things, new everything. No one lets her down, but she claims that they might so she’s wary because it’s happened before. As if that’s not everyone. As if we haven’t all been let down. As if there are any guarantees.
You know. You have that friend. You know history. You know.
There’s all this redness overtaking the blue. Bruises and break-hewn bone and I’m disappearing into something. I think it’s the way betrayal works on me. It works differently on you. I know because you’re always telling me how you’re NOT LIKE ME. You say, “I’M NOT LIKE YOU,” and you mean it in the worst way, but you think it’s ok to say it because everyone else thinks it’s ok to say that to me, but I don’t hear anyone say it to anyone else. You think it’s ok to say, “YOU’RE SO SENSITIVE,” because you’re mean, not because I’m so sensitive which I am but not the way you think. I’m SO SENSITIVE to pain, SO SENSITIVE to electricity and light pollution.
I stand by the river sometimes watching for trout and I try not to scare them. I want to communicate my softness, my redness and all the shapes in me and bruises and cuts and how I balance myself but mostly I’m orange and painted and trying not to take up space, slanting myself, but also creating art. I want to communicate that I see your softness and redness, the shapes and bruises and cuts and want to help in the balancing. Or support. Or behold in silence. Whatever you need.
I try to take an astronaut’s view of things and frame my bruised and battered feet in gold framed memory keeping devices. I paint and tear and tear and paint and hover-attach my little art self to the bigger overall collage of us.
Bigotry is the construct to tear down is all. And more.
I know that’s controversial.
You know.
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