Never Alone by Valerie Parente
I pray that you remember
your life in this world
is more than just yours.
When you hurt yourself
you hurt your loved ones too
and I hope you see that as proof
that you are never alone inside of you.
– Valerie Parente (9-11-2020)
My Own Fault by Valerie Parente
When I was a little girl
I used to cry when a boy would tell me he had a crush on me.
I would become lightheaded and it was hard to breathe
and the only way to feel okay was to be so, so mean,
determined to make the nice boys feel sorry.
In my adult life
it’s been a lot easier to say that nobody is capable of loving me
than to accept the deeply twisted and tangled reality
that I make it near impossible for love to be received
because I am so unbelievably scared of intimacy.
So to the boys who had the nerve to ever be nice:
I apologize.
You didn’t do anything wrong and I wish you well.
You didn’t petrify me, I petrified myself.
– Valerie Parente (9-9-2020)
Past Tense Mentality by Valerie Parente
I only experience a small percentage of my current reality
because a huge part of me is stuck in a past tense mentality.
I have a bad habit of seeing the world like its purely history
and every fleeting moment, a potential novel in a library.
It’s a hoarder’s kind of mind, in a sense
one that values past time over presence
and that’s quite the paradox in the big scheme
because everything present becomes memory.
So when you tell me you’re done with your stay
well I was just warming up to yesterday.
– Valerie Parente (9-9-2020)
Features “Old Soul”, “I Will Never Be The Same”, and “A Poetic Manifesto”
from Rather Be Haunted on Amazon.com
Minds change but hers stays the same by Valerie Parente
She makes an effort not to cry every day
and the professionals don’t know what to say
because she’s well aware that sympathy fades
and people lose interest when you’re not okay
but she’s already made it up in her broken brain
that she’s going to mourn until she can replace
all the memories she was risky enough to make.
She knows it’s not a healthy way to operate,
she understands how a psyche builds and breaks
and she can read a mind from a mile away
but that’s what got her in this vulnerable place,
she forgot that other minds can give and take
and she kept giving to what became an empty space
because she was hyper aware of another’s mental state
and that’s why it hurts so much when minds change,
that’s why it hurts her so much, every day.
– Valerie Parente (9-7-2020)
Living Proof by Valerie Parente
Funny how my biggest fear is being alone
but I’ve been doing just that my whole life.
Lovely how we can be so deeply afraid
of what we’ve already proven we can get through.
You are so much stronger
than you give your conscience credit for.
– Valerie Parente (9-3-2020)
Dead To Me by Valerie Parente
Go ahead and be dead to me,
but don’t be surprised when I grieve.
– Valerie Parente (9-3-2020)
The Magic of Writing by Valerie Parente
Sometimes when I write poetry
I have one particular line
then I build around it over time
with specific syllables and rhymes
while forming a story-line.
Sometimes when I write prose
I have a thought in my mind
and as it starts to materialize
I come to gradually realize
an ongoing theme that transpires.
I think writing is pure magic
because I hear a phrase in my brain
then use a pen to translate
and tap into your mental space
with ease and literary grace.
– Valerie Parente (9-1-2020)
Painstaking Accountability
by Valerie Parente
The thing about making a decision
that you really don’t want to make
is that when you hurt your own feelings
you have no one else to blame.
It’s a hell of a lot harder
and takes a hell of a lot longer
to accept your own message
when you know you were never helpless.
– Valerie Parente (8-29-2020)
The Vulnerability of Hope by Valerie Parente
To have hope is to be vulnerable
and open to disappointment.
When you are hopeless nothing can hurt you,
you’ve given up and everything is pointless.
It is better to be hopeful
despite the pain that will transpire
because the universe chose us for the human experience
and that is this life’s greatest honor.
– Valerie Parente (8-28-2020)
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