Dear Vincent
by Natalia Arreola
I found one of your drafts before you became stamp as an artist
do you remember? she was almost innocent and lost
like you in those times
I read how hard it was for you to survive
in a complicate world with your mind
Did you love her? did you feel
the same as her?
You helped her, and who helped you besides Theo?
How did you do it? You carried her babies in your arms as yours and begged her to marry you
but she was lost
I read your life and saw your pain
Were you in that drawing chalk, or was she?
the woman naked with her knees pulled up
head in her arms
and her pendulous breast hang over her small womb
poor skinny legs for a prostitute
did you like her company to draw her, or was she something else
does she was a real person?
I can’t see her face,
but I can see you
I feel you know her as you lovely Sien
Sorrow, you named it
to hide the truth from Theo
from Ma and Pa, who were furious at you
for your compassionate heart
She was your little secret,
I read how you tried to explain it to Theo
You wrote to him, "I have a sense of being at home when I'm with her."
was she? was she abandoned?
or maybe she was your muse for a while
How can there be on earth a woman alone, abandoned?
a prostitute muse with pain in her shoulders
with you by her side
but I need to understand why
you left her, or was she?
She told you, "there's nothing to be done about it...
it's bound to end up with me jumping into the water."
did you expect too much of her?
or maybe
you loved what you took from her.
The woman naked she was once
you took in front her eyes
to create a striking, poignant
of an idealized woman
and turn her into the way you see her
Sorrow became immortal in a frame
but Sien committed suicide
by drowning herself in Rotterdam's harbor
as she had once predicted in 1883.
Natalia Arreola is one of DiN's nonfiction editors. She is studying English at New Mexico State University with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Psychology. She is expected to graduate in the Spring of 2021. She is also an editor of a literary journal called Chrysalis and is part of the BorderSenses organization, located in El Paso, Texas. She aspires to become an editor for a publishing house and a successful YA fiction writer.
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