dear frida (coming september 1st)

written in fuchsia ink

paper covered in rainbow coloured dust

dear frida,

me again. leander just sent me the pictures we took today and i can't stop looking at them.

by the time i'd reassembled myself after the laolao thing, it had stopped raining outside, so we went into the garden and he had me draw a hopscotch path across my chest. (chest as in torso, not as in boobs.) (i was wearing a bandeau top, i didn't go naked or something.) (it wasn't all as daring as you would've made it.)

he'd also gotten me a floral maxiskirt, teal lipstick and azul mascara. somehow i didn't even think of that as strange anymore, not even when he sprinkled my face in chalk dust, and it started to pour again, and the colours started mixing, and then this rainbow appeared, both in my belly button and overhead, and i felt like the entire spectrum. i felt like you.

he titled the album april showers, april fools.

you know, i'd actually really like him to photograph me as you, laying on the street, covered in gold dust and blood. that's how your boyfriend, alex, described you after the bus accident, you know. "something strange had happened," he said, "frida was totally nude. the collision had unfastened her clothes. someone in the bus, probably a house painter, had been carrying a packet of powdered gold. this package broke, and the gold fell all over the bleeding body of frida. when people saw her, they cried, 'la bailarina, la bailarina!' with the gold on her red, bloody body, they thought she was a dancer." he also said your screaming when the handrail was pulled out of your body, drowned out the sirens.

that's the most beautiful ugly thing i've ever heard.

i'm still so sorry for you.

yesterday, i read you wouldn't even have gotten on that fricking bus if you hadn't lost your little umbrella. you got impaled by a handrail because you were looking for a little umbrella. i'd say god's ways are strange, but i don't really believe in god. i don't think i do, at least. did you? do goddesses believe in god?

oh, jeez, it's one a.m. and i'm still staring at those pictures.

i don't think i'm brave enough to ask leander to photograph me with the gold dust and everything. i don't think i'm brave at all.

you know, when we were done taking the pictures and i was pouring him some raspberry iced tea, i told him i liked the skirt or something, and he said i could keep it. i almost spilled. "what? no."

"i bought it for you anyway."

"you paid for that?"

"hush, it was like two pounds." he laughed. "i go thrift shopping, you know. like macklemore. take it. i'm not going to wear it anyway."

"well, neither am i," i said.

"why not? you said you liked it."

"but it's too strange."

he laughed. "i'm starting to think you've strangeophobia." (so was i.) "shame, really. strange looks good on you." it could've been flirty but it wasn't. he stated it so plainly, between two gulps of ice tea.

"i'll give you two pounds for it," i tried, but he shook his head.

"just promise me you won't let it die a lonely death in the deep end of your closet."

i did.

thing is, the skirt looks like a flesh-eating plant, and exactly zero girls at school dress like flesh-eating plants. "someone's gotta be the first," leander said when i told him that.

"yeah, but..." i stammered. "don't people stare? when you wear things like that, i mean."

we both looked down at his tye-die harem pants. "does it matter?" he shrugged. "people stare anyway."

tell me about it. i bet you were stared at, too, when you started to wear your traditional mexican clothes and walked around the streets looking like the most gorgeous souvenir. not that you gave a shit.

i still wish i were more like you, frida.

yours truly,

lei