I created these three illustrations for Heather Rounds' poems. They are made for Hyrsteria Zine which is an artist-run zine based in Baltimore made to challenge the conversations about social divisions in gender, race and culture.
We shared our stories to the beloved skulls of our dead, those shelters of the soul, dug back up from earth once the bone dried. We caked our collected skulls in the brightest possible clay, bringing something of life back to the face. The faces of our dead filled our houses and we told them what we needed them to know. We made decisions in their presence and prayed. We told them what fright packed our dreams full. We asked them whether or not the apricot trees thrived. But mostly, in the presence of our dead souls, we shared our stories and gave birth to new ones.
We had the heart and the lungs, but above all we had our heads packed with light. We yelled and dreamed and bled our stories as loud as the dark would allow.
Our stories came as well-nursed plants and weak ones. Our stories came as horses, bulls and lions. As a rosette of eleven leaves inscribed into a circle decorated with triangles. Our stories were a pair of birds holding a crown.
