Her Dark Things by Audra Colfax
Piece #8: See Me
Oil and mixed media on canvas. 12″ x 12″.
[Image of a gnarled jumble of abstracted, paper-white birch trees and oversize, overlapping iron-gray boulders evocative of a bird’s nest. Found objects incorporated throughout by layering.]
Note on a sticky note found tucked under laminate flooring in the laundry room during a renovation of the Dunn residence.
the baby is here it
came early.
—Jan89. CD.
Note on yellow legal paper found folded inside a copy of Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion in the den at the Dunn residence.
the baby is MINE is the
baby the baby is Eveline
mine
is my baby Eveline
my DAUGHTER and Brady
done with me with us says I’m too much now
that I’m off the MEDS
he can TELL even though
I lie and tell him I still take them
he REFUSED to be what she needs
a FATHER
I said haven’t I been BETTER since
we learned about her
about Evie
he said yeah he said for a WHILE
but that ended a while ago
when you ABANDONED your plan
your treatment
which feels like he’s blaming M
who he doesn’t even really know
so I hate him for that because
M (M) sees me is the only one who
sees me
—Jan89. CD.
Note on Lisa Frank stationery found in a tea tin in Cindy Dunn’s bedroom closet in the Dunn residence.
I’ve drawn some pictures of
some sketches when she’s been napping I should have been
napping too I KNOW but I can’t it’s like I CAN’T and
when she’s peaceful she is so BEAUTIFUL so I sketch her when I
can the drawings are not very good somehow she is so beautiful but
the drawings
are not it’s like
I can’t
SEE her.
—Feb89. CD.
Note on torn graph paper found in a tea tin in Cindy Dunn’s bedroom closet in the Dunn residence.
I sneak sneak sneak back to King City
Like a ghost, unseen, only felt
because
M wants to draw me he wants to keep drawing me and he tells me
to keep drawing he says he likes me this way in this crackedwideopen
way and he says it’s good it’s better being around him I’m better
it’s beautiful
to keep letting myself be raw and empty and keep NOT taking my
meds and stare blank eyed at walls and at HER and just let him
paint
and paint and paint me and now I bring
she has colic
she screams and SCREAMS all day and she
screams and screams all NIGHT and M hates it and he LOVES
it and I think he hates her and I think he loves her
for the way she makes me all broken and broke down and skeletal
and turned inside out and at least
he likes ME
some kinda way at least he still lets ME come to him when I need to
we exhaust ourselves and deplete and RANSACK and ruin ourselves
down in my clearing
all three of us
sometimes all four of us
and
M says sure okay my canarybananagoldenrodlemonyellow girl
but that’s just the way I LIKE you.
—Feb89. CD.
Drawings on loose-leaf sheets found in a sandwich bag in the roughed hollow of a birch tree on Lupine Valley property.
[A rough pencil sketch, ovoid, a potato, a potato trying to be a baby, formless, blurry.]
Title: Evie.
[A rough pencil sketch, a baby, human, naked, with discernible hands and feet that are formed more like the claws of birds. The talon-hands reach toward a throat, a chest, a disembodied person, maybe a woman, naked. Scratches. Gashes.]
Title: Evie.
—Feb89. CD.
Note on water-stained, loose-leaf paper found in a sandwich bag in the roughed hollow of a birch tree on Lupine Valley property.
mom says there is something
MISSING
in me
I think she has
SEEN
what I have done
fingernails and pricks and burns and bruises, cuts getting bigger
she wants me to think
up
to think UP
like my necklace, the dove
but
like me it could only ever be
an anchor
too heavy
to lift my head above
its shine.
—Mar89. CD.