What am I if not God’s art? God creates perfection but you say that I’m wrong and in the same virtuous breath that I was made in His image all along. How can the thing that created everything be a pillar of perfection but create a world of flaws?
Every abomination was someone’s creation can we say the creator is sick but not their rules and their laws either I am a masterpiece, so idealistic or I was a mistake never meant to spawn but the one thing I know for sure is that I exist so it would be insanity to say that there is no God.
The creator must be an artist because our existence is a paradox the goal of art is not to appear perfect the goal is to express a breath and a thought.
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.
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.
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