Sticks and Stones, and Names Can Hurt Us Too

 

                               It is a labor of love                       Like poems hid away,
                               (and labor to love)                       With clumsy words
                               The broken child                          And awkward rhyme
                               Conceived in love,                        Yet these rough works
                               And borne in hope,                       Can speak to me
                               But, struggling….                           If I allow them to
                               My labor’s pain                              I’m looking past
                               Is that I treat                                 Cadence and rhythm
                               But cannot heal                              And disguises children wear
                               The bones and nerves                    Like looking past
                               And misformed parts                      Van Gogh’ strokes
                               That cannot be remade                   To see the lonely night
                               But still I see                                   I see messages in poems
                               Their human souls                           And songs in children’s hearts
                               Trapped here in twisted form           About our life, and love

Laura Hans, Class of 2001