Lessons on Seeing

$6 for a choice of 2 pints of gelato 

Finally, time is slow enough to wonder what degree of air pressure softens or sharpens wind 

Squiggles of tar in the parking lot are an unfinished Kandinsky 

“Your entirely devoted,” the postman Joseph Roulin wrote to Vincent van Gogh. “You are in a beautiful part of the world.” 

The salmon poem, the apple poem, the geese poem. I am the type to think about two or seven words for an eternity

Clicking the pipette tip into the disposal, I think about how we will spend all the years of our lives looking at at most mere millions of cells

Most people find their Gods, and I have found more peace through a confocal. The fluorescence tells me everything there is to see

Driving through the Taconic Mountains, M. perfectly recites the orange poem from middle school, and I smile more on the inside than anyone knows

Van Gogh, describing Roulin to his brother, wrote, “But such a good fellow, so wise, so sensitive, and so faithful.” 

Words, among very few others, have never failed me

Everything I need to see lays itself out eventually 

I know, and I will die knowing, that love is a war that everyone—I mean it, really everyone— loses and loses again

Sophia Liu is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is writing a poetry collection that attempts to make sense of personal and global loss through the lens of the life sciences. Sophia's most recent journalism work has focused on activism against the new 300-foot jail in Manhattan's Chinatown and gun violence prevention in New Haven. From 2022 to 2023, she served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Surging Tide Magazine, where she hosted an interviews column. She hopes that art and writing can help inspire and retain sensitivity and urgency in the face of overwhelming global injustice and grief. Sophia studies Neuroscience and the History of Science.