The Damsel & The Demon OUT NOW

August 24, 2025August 24, 2025Leave a comment

The Damsel & The Demon by Valerie Parente

The Damsel & The Demon is a poetry/fantasy story hybrid (verse novel) meant to be an allegory for the healing process, whether that be healing from addiction, a toxic relationship, a traumatic event, or anything in between. Valerie drew inspiration from her personal struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia to create this Allegory for Healing through the lens of the main character, Daphne. For both Daphne and Valerie, fleeting feelings can only exist as fixations, and the rhythmic stanzas of an internal dialogue, playing like poetry, is the conduit between the mentally disordered author and the hexed protagonist of this story. There is so much beauty in healing, but healing is still ever so messy, uncovering darkness where we expected light and vice versa. Determined to create this massive poem with no help from search engines or AI, Valerie made it her mission to come up with every rhyme on her own; turning to the internet for help was forbidden. As a result, The Damsel & The Demon is an authentic fantastical dark fairytale scripture rich with revelations and an aim to help readers everywhere see themselves in the damsel archetype as well as the ailment they struggle to separate from in the demon.

Valerie Parente is a writer and artist from Massachusetts whose bodies of work often explore the theme, “Finding beauty in darkness” and general mental health awareness.

Succubus

October 6, 2023March 1, 2024Leave a comment

Succubus by Valerie Parente

Milky eyes rolled
in the back of her head
they accuse the succubus
of stealing dreams from the men.

She’s only as good
as when they want to be around her
as if her morality
is tied to their arousal.

He can touch her
but she can’t touch him
just like she can lose her value
but he can only win.

Her pleasure, her lust,
a malevolence in itself
while he’s in high heaven
she’s going straight to hell.

They call her a succubus
because she likes to be exposed
that’s why they justify
putting a knife to her throat.

But they don’t know
she’ll stroke the knife with her tongue
because she taught herself
to like the taste of blood.

SALVATION (A Mask)

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022Leave a comment

SALVATION (A Mask) by Valerie Parente

Saving lives
and ruining lives
are two very different things
but often the ones who promise salvation
are the ones that follow it with condemnation
and it is this very intolerance
that muddies all common sense.

They say they want to help
by creating a concept of hell
but they don’t really want to save your soul
they just want power and control.

True salvation doesn’t come from a hierarchy or rules
true salvation comes from acceptance with the truth
and the truth is there’s something within
that makes you ever so resilient.

– Valerie Parente (7-15-2022)

Through Hell (Is The Way Out)

March 10, 2021March 10, 20211 Comment

Through Hell (Is The Way Out) by Valerie Parente

The longer you feed that unhealthy mental state,
trying and trying to avoid the tallest flames,
that fire is only going to expand its space,
and engulf you into a larger blaze.

I had to go through a brutal kind of hell,
to address a prolonged flaw with my mental health,
a problem that put too much pressure on someone else,
and now I finally feel like the best version of myself.

– Valerie Parente (3-10-2021)

A Germaphobe’s Hell

April 13, 2020June 24, 2021Leave a comment

A Germaphobe’s Hell by Valerie Parente

When someone else understands the anxiety I’ve been feeling for half my life
I don’t feel comfort, I feel competition.
I worked from the inside out to walk through this hell
and now you’re telling me to turn around and walk with everyone else.

No, I don’t want the world to change their mind and say that my mental strife was justified
don’t tell me that my fears were right all along.
Why would I want to see my disorder become mainstream
after you spent years telling me that my pain is unique?

I understand the necessity to chain us all down as a way to protect ourselves
but I can’t pretend it doesn’t feel like hell
to be told to back-track all your progress
because now it really is a matter of life or death.

– Valerie Parente (4-13-2020)

A Writer’s Threat

June 4, 2019June 4, 20191 Comment

A Writer’s Threat by Valerie Parente

For years I have been my own muse.

If I make you my muse then you have done the near-impossible… you have overthrown my ego. Congratulations, you are divine in my eyes.

Just hope to God that you’ve become my muse for enchanting my life, not for inflicting senseless pain. Because if you try to write me off then I’m going to turn the writer on. If you ask me to stop then guess what? You just gave me a new prompt. I can orchestrate a symphony of sentences that will touch you to tears or I can arrange a thousand words into your personal hell. Both will pierce your heart ten times stronger than you pierced mine. And when you read what’s on my mind you better actually listen to the message and cherish the emotional chords it strikes, good or bad, because a storm of more rhymes and literary devices are about to head your way and tear apart every piece and particle that once constructed your comfort zone… and that’s going to continue happening with more and more force until I become your muse.