Six years after a wooden statue
haunted my trips to the grocery store,
I walked into a dark room
with several dozen of my classmates.

Soft, lively music played
and a blonde Manhattan Beach mother came out to speak to us
about the featured art movement of the month,
the Surrealists.

Surreal: what is not quite waking, and not quite dreaming.
The union of real and unreal.
My seven-year-old mind found it frightening
to see familiar objects so deformed,

a man whose nose had become a pipe,
a man and woman made of multi-colored lace,
elephants with legs the length of skyscrapers,
the flying bed at Henry Ford Hospital.

The blonde woman told us about these Surrealists,
about Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, and René Magritte.
By the time the assembly was over, I was crying
(why exactly, I cannot say).

That night I dreamt I was late to school.
The bell rang loudly; my teacher looked at me,
her expression stern and reproachful.
The bells rang louder and louder as the clocks began to melt.

For years I slept with the lights on,
terrified that the Surrealists
would sneak into my room and stab me
with a sword made of an elephant’s eye.

I feared I would wake up a deer,
bleeding in the forest,
nine arrows in my flesh,
antlers reaching out of my still-human head.

Still when I visit art exhibits,
fear springs from the same deep roots as admiration.
Two years ago I saw “The Two Fridas”
in person for the first time.

My most feared painting,
it has haunted my dreams since the infamous art assembly.
The blood flowing from severed vein onto white dress,
the veins wrapped around Frida’s arm like bracelets,

around her neck like a necklace,
connecting her to one who is not quite herself
and yet not quite another.
Kahlo herself seemed present, in all her endless suffering,

as I stared at the painting before me, which stood out from all others
in the crowded room.
I felt for the first time that I understood what she meant
when she painted herself separated from herself.

The Surrealists will not leave me alone.
They have filled my mind with strange images.
They have perhaps transformed me into one of their own,
for my greatest ambition has long been the union of real and unreal.