To wrap up our unit “Aesthetics and Art” in my Philosophy of Literature course, my teacher asked us to interpret one piece of art—any form—as long as we were unfamiliar with it. 

I had remembered stumbling upon a particular poem on Substack entitled “Jessica gives me a chill pill” by Angie Sijun Lou, and decided to take a closer look. 

Of course, to understand, you must read it yourself. 

“Jessica gives me a chill pill”

Angie Sijun Lou

I keep waking up in different

beds and in this same

body. I have to say this

right away so you know

it didn’t start with limbs

slackened, hair

oily, a cruelty towards

the sun. It started

in the backseat of Jessica’s

Pepto-dismal truck. She

tied my hair back with

rubber bands when

the freeway passed clean

through us. Jessica says

I can feel like a cherry

blossom tree wobbling

under lightning. Jessica

has a forehead scar from

the deep end of a pool. I

ask Jessica what drowning

feels like and she says

not everything feels like

something else. That night

we lose the 7/11 lottery

but I draw my lucky

number, no quarters

so we scratch our tickets

with fingernails. Jessica says

that’s the sanctity of ritual— 

a ceaselessness in how

I look at every drop

of rain before it touches

ground, the way Jessica

mouths my name in her

sleep eating each syllable like

a minor god. I’m coming out

as someone who loves

things unevenly, my theologies

strewn out in the dark,

this iPhone an almost oracle.

Jessica forces me to watch

every sunset even when I

am full. She puts her fingers

in my mouth and says open

your eyes. Open them.

You see the small-town girls

on big billboards? One day

that’s us.

I believe it’s easiest to break it down into chunks.

The first line that stuck out to me was the following:

“Jessica

has a forehead scar from

the deep end of a pool. I

ask Jessica what drowning

feels like and she says

not everything feels like

something else.” 

As a very sensitive person, this stuck out to me because I believe this line perfectly encapsulates how untranslatable emotions can be. If you don’t know me, I cry at almost everything. I cry watching cute baby videos on Instagram Reels, I cry reading my friend’s college essays and I cry when I see emotional ads on TV. So, when I try to explain to people the intensity of how I feel things through my writing it seems as if it’s incomprehensible, and this line in particular really reaffirms that fact. 

It seems that no matter how much time I spend writing, how many analogies and metaphors I use or how good I get at it, it doesn’t seem to convey how I truly feel. It’s like trying to explain to someone who’s colorblind how colorful the sunset really is.

It makes me sad in all the ways that language fails us, particularly with the saturation of certain metaphors. I mean, even in this poem, if you think about drowning as a metaphor (for instance, drowning in emotion), all of these very meaningful metaphors get diluted in common speech. So, will we ever really know how somebody else truly feels? I don’t think it matters how many languages you speak, or how good you are at communicating; I believe the answer to be no; language has limits. 

On top of that, I think this line conveys good lessons on the reality of pain. I think part of why we use analogies and metaphors to try and understand different experiences or feelings is because we’d be exhausted if we all felt things in a new way every time we experienced something new, so we try to simplify it for ourselves. 

In my mind, if we stopped trying to compare experiences to others, it’d help us shed our expectations and help us observe without judgment. Pain is not something to be compared or simplified by any means.  

Continuing with the poem.

“Jessica forces me to watch

every sunset even when I

am full. She puts her fingers

in my mouth and says open

your eyes. Open them.”

I see this as Jessica’s attempt at trying to take care of the narrator. Earlier in the poem, the narrator states:

 “I keep waking up in different

beds and in this same

body. I have to say this

right away so you know

it didn’t start with limbs

slackened, hair

oily, a cruelty towards

the sun.”

These characteristics paint a picture of a sullen, unkept, exhausted person—traits parallel to someone who struggles with depression. The narrator conveys that she is “full.” She seems to be exhausted, saying, “No, I’m okay where I am,” and Jessica retaliates by forcing her to appreciate the beauty and positives in life. The sunset in this poem symbolizes to me, the small, beautiful things in life that the narrator struggles to see herself. 

This also ties back to Jessica’s scar and its placement. The author chose to place it on her forehead, not on the stomach or hip, a place very visible on the body. I believe this is part of how Jessica communicates to the narrator, almost as if saying, “I’ve suffered badly just like you, and you need to see that there’s hope for us ‘small-town girls.’”

In regards to the second part of the quote, where she opens her mouth with her fingers, I believe this calls back to the title of the poem. Jessica is forcing her to take this “chill pill” by opening the narrator’s mouth against her will. 

As for my more general analysis, I think it’s quite possible that the narrator has romantic feelings towards Jessica. After reading it a few times, I kept sensing this weirdly intimate feeling between Jessica and the narrator. She reminisces on the way Jessica says her name, she ties the narrator’s hair back for her and she seems to admire these small things she does in ways that seem more personal than just appreciation of a friend. 

Additionally, I thought the structure of this poem was interesting. At first, it really confused and bothered me as it’s quite difficult to read; it’s not smooth or cohesive whatsoever. Despite this, I learned to love it because I think it mimics the vulnerability and confessional tone of the poem; it’s messy, and so are emotions. 

This poem as a whole was very well thought out, and I believe it to be underappreciated. I highly encourage those reading to seek out more of Lou’s work and to look deeper into all art you consume. Understanding the deeper meaning of art is critical to understanding the world around us.