Tag: eating disorder recovery

Starving Artist

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Starving Artist by Valerie Parente

Eat your words and be compelled
to doubt the passion within myself
when you say I’m not a successful artist
because I haven’t made a profit
that I’m supposed to make money from my art
but I only spend money making art so far
struggling to make it accessible
striving to make it impressionable
but I guess I’m just a “starving artist”
scrambling for coins in empty pockets
how am I supposed to hide from depression and inaction
when I’m standing in the open begging for traction
and the “starving artist” in me starved before
the teenager with anorexia as her mentor
my talent used to be limiting my intake
now my talent is having something of value to say
so don’t you dare preach to me about starvation
when I already mastered the art of deliberate deprivation
if the world really insists on giving me this title
I’m going to be hellbent and entitled
when you use the label “starving artist” again
I’ll eat your words while rhyming them.

– Valerie Parente (9-28-2025)

Heart In My Throat

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Heart In My Throat by Valerie Parente

I had a distressing dream
that my heart was in my throat
and the voice inside of me
didn’t know how to flow.

I struggled to tell the elders
I could not survive like this
but they were just happy
that love in me still exists.

All of my love and heartache
at the same level I consume
the two were not the same
but my signals were askew.

A heart in the throat
is a very strange case
I could still feel it all
it just came from the wrong place.

It is not an easy way to live
and I had trouble vocalizing
how I would not survive
but I kept on surviving.

When I awoke, I remembered my youth
and how I thought I’d die instead of grow
but here I am, my adulthood so full of love
each day fulfilled beyond my wildest hopes.

I think it was young me all along
trying to communicate
“Thank you for believing I was wrong”
to the elder in me today.

– Valerie Parente (1-26-2025)

Hunger

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Hunger by Valerie Parente

I was never any good
at decoding my appetite,
was I really hungry
or was I empty inside?
Not in the pit of my stomach
but my heart and its hole,
looking for an object
for my affection to go.

I strive for permanence
but permanence scares me,
I’m afraid of full
but full is not finality,
there’s a fleeting hunger
that comes and goes,
and I am an example
of the flux and flow.

Ever since I met you
I feel the endless regimen,
the cycle of hunger
is a permanent impermanence,
a satisfaction then a longing
hungry, full, then hungry again,
and you remind me
that this makes me human.

I will always come back
now that I’ve had a taste
I finally understand my appetite
and the way it is paced.
I will always want you again
just not all at once
and I am no longer afraid
of a man’s permanence.

– Valerie Parente (1-19-2025)

The Undead Mermaids (A Fantasy Chronicle)

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The Undead Mermaids by Valerie Parente

Little girl skipping pebble stones
in the bay behind her little home
mother told her not to go
but to that little lake she strolled.

She played a dangerous game
with creepy mermaids her age
they said “dip your toes in the lake”
beneath the water lily maze.

Little girl offered one tiny inch
that’s when she got sucked in
groped and bitten
by those devious sirens.

Then took place the wicked spell
the undead mermaid hell
little girl turned into one of them
luring other girls to that realm.

Prominent were their ribs
with hair that became thin
so emaciated and addicted
to rotting in their grey skin.

Once choice is all it takes
a little curiosity in your brain
to turn you into a slave
recruiting more undead mermaids.

– Valerie Parente (4-23-2022)