Frida Kahlo bled her heart up into black hills, over olive beach,

and into blue-gray waves bringing only the repetition

of pain and disloyalty. Rivera had done it again, this time

with Cristina, her own sister. So again Frida cut her hair,

again brought back her European look, again

composed on canvas the colors she felt inside, painting

the dresses to ward off the crushing effect of betrayal.

The self-portrait’s tears were easy, yellow droplets to contrast

rosy cheeks. The small schoolgirl uniform, prim and innocent,

a counterpoint to the Tehuana costume, both one-

armed and legless, an improvement over her own self,

the sweater bearing no visible hands or arms. For feet,

one on land, the other on water turned outward and patched,

a sign of surgery. The ornamental steel rod piercing

her chest brings the eye to gaze on the stabbing two Cupids

take credit for, each riding an end as if in a game of see-saw,

the heartless woman a fulcrum for their fun, while her heart,

large as a tortoise, lies beached, as if on its back, divulging

all it has to land and sea, looking to flood the earth red.

Worse, this rending of heart and soul, than when the bus

that teenage year broke everything in her, its aftermath to fit

her with a body cast that gave no outlet except to paint.

“The Broken Column” let people know who’d suffered

catastrophe of what life outside the norm of wellness felt, when pain

did not visit but moved in and took over the body’s house,

managed miraculous tortures in every room, large and small,

each vying for attention, consolation, and grief in voices

so stentorian the accumulated chorus droned its own Babel.

The painting was done. She washed the brushes and wiped clean

her fingers, riven with rainbows. Rivera had vanished into the scene,

behind and beyond it, giving it texture, richness, authenticity.

Nothing without him, even as her images rendered him gone.

Richard Holinger has appeared in Iowa Review, Hobart, Chautauqua, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize, two-time Best of the Net, one-time Best Small Fictions nominee, and appears in Best Microfiction 2025. Books include North of Crivitz (poetry) and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (essays). His forthcoming chapbook, “Down from the Sycamores,” will be available for presale in February. He earned a doctorate in Creative Writing from UIC, and lives in rural northern Illinois.