After birth, what did she feel?
I think Diane Arbus just took pictures of herself
Her own alienation
Did she ever experience isolation?
Loneliness, yes, loneliness?
Did it devour her
like it devours me?
What did she hunger for?
What did she want to leave behind?
As a woman, was she ever really loved by a man?
Was the strange hypnotic beauty that she found
in her subjects enough for her?
Why did she follow strangers home or on the
street and make Buddhas out of them
by asking them if she could take their picture?
Did she worship art
or the sadness that held up a mirror
to the interior of her own soul?
Was she caught between a void
and something unresolved?
Did the photographs
give a voice to her unhappiness?
Did taking photographs make her happy?
My father wanted me to change my religion, I didn't
Would Diane Arbus still have taken photographs
if she had changed her religion?
My father told me I was pure
Just like Diane Arbus, I suppose,
and just like her photographs
Did the bathwater that she slipped
into feel like the end of a spring morning?
I want to trace the red bloodstained roots in her hands
Wake up, I say
I want to tell her,
it was all just a dream
Why did she take her own life?
Was she just sad, or was it madness?
Did she feel empty inside?
Did taking photographs stop making her feel deeply & “see” intuitively?
When everyone left me,
only grief stayed
Only the sense of longing to belong stayed with me
Just like you, I want to tell Diane Arbus
Before death came upon her, what did she feel?
Dear Diane, I am disabled
Take a polaroid from heaven
I make allowances for my disability
I become the tremors in my hands
while the child eats broccoli
The green florets on her tongue radiating innocence
I shout at my father, defeated, he walks away
Having a disability will give you no patience
I sit on my bed, and stare at my hands
Did my father give me these hands?
Well, he had a role to play
Perhaps it was God's decision
The hospitalisations,
the relapses,
the suicide ideation,
the genetic predisposition
Yes, perhaps it was God's decision
Who do I blame?
I can't blame God
After all, isn't my body a temple?
Aren't I made in the reflection of God?
God, I don't want to be alone
Who is going to look after me?
I'm a hindrance, unnecessary
Another night falls, silence descends
The night and the silence marks the end of springtime
What a journey?
The body, a stranger,
my body, another story,
limbs, just branches, just poetry
just the withering away
of a frail half-existence
When you're disabled, you never forget
the time period when you were able-bodied
You remember the day before
everything changed
I remember
what my body was able to resist
as if it was yesterday
