Francoise Speaks
By: Harley King
Tags: Passion, Art, Poetry, Relationships, Pablo Picasso

Francoise Speaks

Pablo Picasso (Gelatin silver print by Andre Villers, the Art Institute of Chicago, 1957)

Some ask,

“How could you have

stayed with such a beast?”

Others remark, with awe,

“How could you have

left such a genius?”

And neither understands

the true nature of our relationship

and the life we shared.

At first, it was a game,

a challenge, nothing that I

took too serious. I enjoyed

the give and take, the sparring like

a matador and the bull.

Each seeing the world

through his eyes, his demons.

He kissed me once,

sudden, unexpected, hard,

his lips biting into mine,

the pressure of his member,

aroused, passionate, like his

paintbrushes, bristling yet supple.

Then he pretended to be shocked

when I did not slap him,

when I did not yell for help.

Instead, I offered myself,

a sacrifice on the altar,

a muffin to be consumed.

And he ran like

a child with his hand

in the cookie jar,

afraid of being too close,

afraid of losing himself in my fire.

What you, and all the others,

don’t understand is that

he was spring

to my winter,

he was chaos

to my structure.

My father raised me to

be a boy, to follow in

his footsteps, to love

the practical, the mundane.

I rebelled. Pablo offered

what my father could not give—

freedom, the joy of childhood,

anarchy and the fun of living.

I bathed in the craziness,

the spontaneity, the wild

reckless rush towards insanity.

Another time he seduced

me into lying naked

beside him and then

he refused to touch me.

Claimed that all he wanted

was to discover if my body

was as beautiful as

the one in his imagination.

And when I asked whether it was,

he only laughed, that deep

rumbling, belly-shattering laugh

that made me mad.

I yelled at him and kicked

him. I aimed for his groin,

but missed when he stepped aside,

my foot glancing off his thigh.

I think that one of the things

that made our relationship

last as long as it did

was my independence and defiance.

I kept surprising him.

He never knew what to expect.

I kept him on his toes;

I was not the submissive little wife—

who waited patiently for

her drunken bum of a husband

to return home and beat her.

I stood up to him from day one.

My father, though, until he died

believed that Pablo had ruined me—

that he had seduced an innocent

child, brainwashed me. But

I was more my father’s child

then my father knew.

I applied what he taught me

to a different arena,

a different form of warfare.

I controlled Pablo as much

if not more than he did me.

From the very beginning,

I knew what the game was,

what the risks were, and I

believe that I was strong enough

to win. My father had taught

me to understand the subtleties

of the game and how sometimes

you win by appearing to lose.

What I did not understand

in the beginning—what has

taken me years to realize

was that Pablo was my father

in a different disguise. What I took

for spontaneity and anarchy

was only the rigidness

of my father turned inside out.

They were opposite sides

of the same coin—cut from

the same cloth. Men who

in the end, behaved like tyrants

and if I did not obey they threw

me out. Sure, they enjoyed my

independence, and that I was

not meek and mild, but only so

far—as long as I did not reject

them—as long as I eventually

gave in, conceded to their wishes,

they would tolerate my free spirit—

my thinking for myself. They

would brag about my intelligence

to others. But I had to let them

win the final battle—to believe

that they had conquered.

I had escaped one prison,

one set of bars, only to find

myself firmly entrenched behind

the walls of another. So, again,

I had to break free, to find

my own way, to seek my own path.

Yes, I survived living

with the great Picasso,

and am a stronger woman

for having faced the darkness

of my fears, for having wrestled

with the angel of creativity, for

having been consumed by the fires

of passion. What does not destroy

us can only make us stronger.

So when they ask,

“How could you leave

such a genius,”

I only smile and say,

“It was an honor

to have known him.”