The Singularity, The Soul

September 14, 2025September 14, 2025Leave a comment

The Singularity, The Soul by Valerie Parente

When the darkness comes for you
don’t fear being seduced
because the dark loves you, darling
and you are its muse too.

This black hole is enamored by you
a singularity that pulls you in
if it were simply nothing
you wouldn’t feel the attraction.

No, it’s not a void
or in what you lack
it’s a concentration
it’s a black mass.

You feel it in your chest
sucking your energy
past the event horizon
into a bank of memory.

This singularity, they say
compresses all of you infinitely
yet its volume does not exist
well that sounds like a soul, if you ask me.

Don’t you dare compare the black hole to depression
which is ambivalent and unfazed
it contains more emotion than you could imagine
the density of the soul and the darkness are one and the same.

– Valerie Parente (9-14-2025)

Observer Effect

April 27, 2025April 27, 2025Leave a comment

Observer Effect by Valerie Parente

I once had an incredibly vivid dream
that I was conducting an experiment, and I died
and I watched the wall I was looking at
lose a richness only living eyes could provide.

They say you can see the fluidness of life
vanish from a dead person’s eyes
but it actually goes both ways
my ghost saw the same wall, and it was dry.

The world is missing something too
when it is no longer witnessed by a life
I discovered that the simple act of observation
gave the inanimate a quality I can’t describe.

When I’m awake, you know they say
that all matter has its own vital signs
what might be breath in a living body
might be in a wavelength collapsed time.

It all sounds crazy outside of slumber
but my lucid slumber helped me recognize
that miracles like life extend our bodies
and what is on the outside is as divine as you and I.

– Valerie Parente (4-27-2025)

Shadow Sign

July 21, 2021July 21, 2021Leave a comment

Shadow Sign by Valerie Parente

Shadow Sign
you weren’t the light of my life
you were just the shape in which I had been traumatized
I thought you were what I wanted
after all these years of being haunted
because the truth of the matter is
I was never really his
and that unofficial kind of bliss
had me tracing my steps with darkness.

Because Shadow Sign
you were never mine
and with your outline I realize
you weren’t the problem, you were its signal
not something that I was ever meant to rekindle
a simplification of the self
implied light from somewhere else
and that’s the truth to mental health
I looked for love when what I needed was help.

– Valerie Parente (7-21-2021)

“In Touch” FREE ON KINDLE through 7/9/2020

July 5, 2020July 5, 2020Leave a comment

From now through July 9, 2020, my full length novel about obsessive compulsive disorder, In Touch, is FREE on Kindle. Click here!

“Undergraduate physics student, Jef Sterling, has done enough textbook reading to know that the universe is home to countless mind-blowing discoveries. But Jef never expected one of those discoveries to be the mind of an obsessive compulsive writer sharing the same campus as him. After reading a poem by Lacey Parker about her personal struggle with OCD, Jef’s highly rational brain fixates on uncovering the mysteries held captive in Lacey’s highly irrational brain. Throughout the course of a school year these two students exchange ideas that merge science with art, reality with fantasy, and physical phenomena with mental phenomena. While learning from one another Jef makes it his mission to make sense of Lacey’s nonsensical disorder and all of its incredible ironies; how she lives by the notion of feeling everything emotionally but dreads feeling anything physically, how her mind lives to protect as it gradually wreaks destruction, and most paradoxically how both Lacey’s most rewarding qualities and most detrimental flaws manifest from the same brain. In Touch by Valerie Parente is a realistic fiction novel alive with intellectual discussion, mental strife, heartache, and anecdotal insight into the cognitive confines of obsessive compulsive disorder.”

Time Is Not Real

February 9, 2020Leave a comment

Time is not real. Time is just the means that we perceive energy in the universe. All that was, is. All that will be, is. There is no timeline. Just everything in existence including our consciousness entangled in one.

And I think we can find peace in that fact, because when we lose someone, when they’re no longer “here”, they still are. The energy does not disappear. Our ability to recognize their energy might disappear, but that is no indication of the reality that they still exist now and infinitely. When there is no timeline, you cannot lose someone. Ever.

– Valerie Parente (2-9-2020)

Aesthetic Reality

May 12, 2019May 12, 2019Leave a comment

"Marvel" by Valerie Parente

Aesthetic Reality by Valerie Parente

You’re starting to realize that reality is subjective
and perception is the byproduct of perspective
Now you’re deciding not to be fooled by the deception
that self-respect is determined by rejection
as if your meaning is for someone else to measure.
But the truth is that you get to choose your mood
because your personhood is dictated by the personal
and aesthetic stems from what makes you authentic.

– Valerie Parente (5-12-2019)