Rachel Sacks with Dear Endia
Ever draw a portrait of a dead person?
Wonder what she’d say as you
rub reds into the browns of her cheeks and
what the timber of her voice would sound like
if you could ask for her permission
shot over a boy whose name you
wouldn’t even have remembered had you
I look back on teen years,
words to wound rather than guns,
borrowed from uncles, stolen from gods,
in this god-forsaken gun-try.
I thank God there wasn’t a Facebook
to broadcast feuds like the one
I learned of your death when a
close friend and fellow teacher
posted on Facebook in your memory –
before your family moved you
from another high school in Chicago’s
South Side for your Safety.
What does it mean for a 14-year-old girl in
Chicago’s South Side to be safe?
I labor over drawing you –
devote hours on this Friday night to
get your face, smile, round cheeks right.
I pretend that creating a likeness can
somehow honor the lost years,
lost joys, lost memories,
lost high school graduation, lost college,
lost partner, lost family,
lost wedding, lost career, lost dances,
Hope terra cotta and burnt ochre can
capture your living colors.
I draw you and imagine the children I’ve
taught, wondering whether I’ll one day
have to resort to drawing their pictures
in conversation a moment longer.
The poem accompanies Endia’s portrait intentionally, as part and parcel of the work – something spontaneous that flowed from me as I drew her. I felt compelled to handwrite it rather than type it, like a diary entry. It felt too personal not to be guided my own hand, especially as I use my own hand to make this facsimile of Endia.
Imperfections here, in text and picture, are meaningful, as testaments to the humanness of making an elegy. I, human being, honor another, human being, all imperfect, all flawed, all deserving of life. It feels much more poignant and real to me to elegize a victim of violence as a human being, and not as an angel or a cause.
Additionally, the slight differences in my drawing of her, as compared with her actual image, are meaningful. They speak to the process of creating a portrait as elegy, and how we transmit images and stories to promote anti-violence work: from Chicago’s South Side, to my friend elsewhere in Chicago, to my apartment in South Harlem, to here in Crown Heights.
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
titsay
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
kianamaiart