Love and Pain (Vampire)

My submission

Her hair melted down his face as she held him,
indifferent to the cold around her.
The enveloping shadow watched him crumble.

“All these years later and I still do not know what sorrow or grief had befallen them. That day I witnessed something broken trying to make sense of its wound and come away wanting. As I think back I still try to fill in the blanks. How did she know him? Was hers a look of shared loss, or of empathy? It is easy to lose oneself in the gloom, but there is beauty in that connection. Pain draws us together and lays bare unspoken truths.”

About my project

Our theme this month is the painting Love and Pain by Edvard Munch.

I had never seen the painting prior to this project. When I first looked at it, I saw immense sorrow in the man. I imagined something terrible breaking this man emotionally. The woman holds the man, feeling the weight of the pain she has no control in taking away.

For my project I decided to write a short memory from the perspective of the artist. I imagined this scene playing out like a photographer who sees this emotional moment, documents it, but doesn’t necessarily know the story of the subjects. I can’t remember if I wrote the poem(?) or the fictional artist’s reflection first, but I liked the way the imagery, poetry, and quote worked together.

How I made it

I felt the feels and I wrote something. Coming back to this later kind of bums me out, but in a beautiful way.