Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
my pain isn’t wasted if i can take hold of it, turning it,
controlling it, twisting it, carving
i once wrote ‘it’s like turning
pain into poetry.’
i wasn’t wrong, you know. i’m cleverer than i know
it hurts more than i know
more than u know?
probably.
more than i know, because i don’t realize or assess
the pain until later. i look back and notice how much darker
that part of my life seems to be when smeared
across the ambivalent canvas
stretched before me—i promise i’m only
slightly exaggerating—i’m okay mom i promise i’m sorry
(but i’m not, sometimes) and i know
that you’ll never forgive me or know my pain or feel
(i mean who does anyway, feel, that is).
all this talk, wasted, it’s in my
head, it’s in my head, get it out, get it out!
i’m trying, i’m trying, i’m trying—if i say it enough times
will it come true. please i’m begging you.
i’ll let it spill like ink across a canvas, like
my watercolor paints splashed across my paper,
i watch the prussian blue spill into moonglow.
the sky is a murky, muddy purple-blue now.
if the pain is turned into something new maybe
it’ll be okay. if someone else sees it i’ll be okay.
if someone else reads it, feels it, witnesses
my fall it will have been worth
a thousand nights of tears and desperate
aches for love and comfort. you never meant to hurt me
but it hurts all the same.
all i know is that it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
and i want it to
stop.
oh, i’m sorry, do u see me now? or it.
i promise i’m okay i promise i promise
the pain is worth the beauty of the piece
i never asked to hurt you know and
the starving artist isn’t real
to exist is to feel pain
and love and anger and happiness and
i’ll be okay i’ll be okay if
i can eject the pain into paper—sorry for the inkblot
it was a mistake i can’t erase
i’m sorry that i hurt u
when i was telling the truth.
but u hurt me too
u know.
i’m just trying to survive
Alicia Wu is a writer who is currently attending Brandeis University, where she plans to double major in Creative Writing and English and minor in Classical Studies and AAPI Studies. Her current work is an urban fantasy universe where Greek myths meet our modern world.