Intrusive

10 in x 10 in. Oil on canvas.

This idea was conceived during a heartbreak. Not just romantic. Alcoholism has poised loved ones the earliest in my life. My parents both sloppily hid, but I expertly overlooked their addictions. As an adult, I have seen countless friends and sparse lovers become lost in drinking. I feel if I had wanted, I could have succumbed to it. So the black widows, three of them, represent the complete, half, and new moon. Maiden, to crone. They are occupying the cranium that has been discarded. They also directly relate their venom to the poison voluntarily filling our minds. I condensed my precise feelings into this poem:

Lost eyes, without color, searching so pensively for what? Understanding? Compassion? Void? The euphoric release to drown inhibition in a body or bottle.

In too deep, and something crucial was lost. It had become immortalized in the glass of your drunk stare. I see that person. I see the wound that keeps you feral to bite the helper—the desire to cause pain to yourself. I can recognize these thoughts because they scurry across my mind sober.

It is my fault. I hope all these messages in bottles reach you. They wash up in your hangover, illegible and water stained. I do not know why I try; wading in the shallows of cheap intentions washed up in the cheap drink. It could be for my grandiose ego, or it could be that I truly am afraid of losing you. Whatever reason, I am a vessel for the other hurt widows now. May that cavity be a better home to their loverless webs, as it was never a kind place for my thoughts.