Matthew Rios, MS2 Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Dogwood / El Cornejo
About the Author: Matthew (Mateo) Rios is a current medical student at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and 2020 graduate of the Illustration department at the Rhode Island School of Design. Much of his interdisciplinary practice bridges the divide between artist, physician & community activist through themes of trauma, marginalization, and love through narrative storytelling and visual media. During his free time, he enjoys watching films, baking for friends and family, and playing board games for much too long.
About the Work: This piece is a meditation on home and growing up with deeply rooted generational trauma. As a child, my mom and I planted a dogwood tree in our yard to memorialize our dog who passed. While we both tended to it and loved it deeply, it ended up fading slowly over time. So this poem attempts to reconstruct the bittersweetness of that connection in tandem with us learning how to speak through the trauma that has stayed with our family over the years.
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