I love the adage “To be loved is to be seen.” It’s succinct, yet something that has resonated with me well. Unsurprisingly, I’m particularly drawn to art where the artist has dedicated their work to a subject like Renaissance painter Fra Filippo Lippi’s portraits of his lover Lucrezia Buti, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems for her lost loved ones or Lemony Snicket’s dedications to Beatrice in An Unfortunate Series of Events (the latter is fictional but very real to me). There is something beautiful about having a tangible visualization of that connection.

At the same time, this is a concept that has pushed me away from depicting people I know in my own work. With that heavy responsibility of bringing elements together to evoke a living, breathing human being, details start to devour me.

How do I even begin to recreate something that real?

But in line with the Thanksgiving spirit, I will try to capture their energies and our memories together and everything that makes these relationships and preserve this vibrancy neatly in stanzas like fireflies in a jar.

To my dad:

Plastic sleeves wrinkling in the canvas bag,
Library books stacked on the counter
All overdue!
You slide the change over.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
We, too, slide out of the parking lot
And onto the street,
Then home.

On the weekends,
You wait as I plug the clippers in
And slide the cover up and click in.
Bzzzzzt it goes
as I work. It’s hot out, and I keep stopping to inspect
my work but

You will wait.
I know it.

Thank you for always supporting me and being patient through it all. I am your #1 fan.

To my mom:
It was just after my 8th birthday,
when the leftover cake was squashed into a paper plate
and sealed in plastic wrap, banished to the back of the fridge,
when the candles were long blown out,
when we saw each other,
and I clasped your hand in mine,
and all the two of us
with our
40 something years of age between us
could do was cry.
I wanted to be whisked back in time
So I could save a wish for you,
but the smoke had already drifted up to the ceiling
too high to be
coaxed and pleaded back into flame.

Thank you for all that you have left me; in another life, I would have loved for you to see me grow up.

To my brother:
At midnight you’re up
Stick of butter and noodles
Gross but I’ll try it

Thank you for letting me annoy you all the time, though you do like to return the favor. You are my star, and I can’t wait to see where you go in the future.