Life can be very fleeting. It has been a number of years since my particular friend died, and yet I still find myself thinking about her in the spaces between activities. I think about her family, who I never knew, and wonder if they are thinking of her too.
It is easy to be cavalier about life. It is easy to forget how fragile we are. It is much easier to forget about her, than it is to remember her.
Vancouver is a city of forgotten women. Women and girls disappear into the streets and are swallowed alive by drugs and abuse, and few people really notice, or choose to recognize that they are gone. I do not want to forget her.
This painting was done shortly after she died, and the poem was done the day following her death. I intended the poem as sort of memorial.
Hey Angel:
Find your way home
In beer stained sweaters.
Leather boots,
Dancing.
We’re dancing
Girlfriend,
Joint in hand.
Hallelujah, but
You’re spiking
You’re spiked.
Too high to fly,
You dropped
Like a rock
(and stopped.)
- Chelsea Bell
