Get A Grip

April 10, 2025April 12, 2025Leave a comment

Get A Grip by Valerie Parente

They said “Get a grip!”
but I wouldn’t listen
because my favorite place
used to be in my head
but that wasn’t a place
it was a method
of coping with all
that remained unsaid
in the real world
when I felt abandoned
so I taught myself
to daydream instead.

It wasn’t until
that grip loosened
I learned who I was
and felt alive again.
I was able to create
when I’d reflect
and it was actually better
than I could ever imagine.
No more make believe
no more need to pretend
flesh and bone was superior
even if it bled.

You are my totem
my rhyme and reason
the thing that reminds me
that I am human.
You are my awakening
my reality check
the thing that made it all
begin to make sense.

You are now my favorite place
an existence I can understand
and when they say “get a grip”
I will hold onto your hand.

– Valerie Parente (4-10-2025)

They Want Your Heart of Gold

March 1, 2025March 1, 20251 Comment

They Want Your Heart of Gold by Valerie Parente

It is not your fault
that you were manipulated again
you trust so easy
and find it hard to comprehend
that someone might use you
to tie up their own loose ends;
just know your greatest crime
was being a good person.

You have a softness through and through
and this quality attracts manipulators to you
because you have something that they don’t
a heart, and it’s made of pure gold.
Gold is one of the easiest elements to mold
to poke and prod and fold
manipulators see you as a commodity to behold
as if your honesty and loyalty could be sold
but did you also know
that gold does not easily corrode?
They can scratch and stretch and pull
but nothing can chip away at your soul.

Darling, you have a heart of gold
and the ones manipulating have a gaping hole.
Guess who is the valuable one
between the two of those?

– Valerie Parente (3-1-2025)

A Mystery

February 8, 2025February 10, 2025Leave a comment

A Mystery by Valerie Parente

When you were young
you wanted to be left alone
for the sole purpose
of attracting a hero.

You didn’t want to be a spouse
you didn’t want to be a camaraderie
you didn’t want to be a parent
you wanted to be a mystery.

You’d sit alone in silence
where smiles were forbidden
because if they understood how you felt
they’d lose all interest.

You were adolescent and vulnerable
and deep in your sins
but would you believe
you were still innocent?

Never call it a conscious choice
when you were tricked to choose
by the shadows in predispositions
trauma of the old and the new.

Despite it all, you wouldn’t call it hell
the pain you endured in the past
hell would have been going through it all
without the support system you had.

You nearly lost it all to the shadows
but you made it out with so much more
manifesting your own enlightenment
you became the hero you longed for.

It is no longer a mystery
how the light shined through
it came through all the cracks
of the hearts that broke for you.

And if you could tell your younger self
one little clue
let it be the resounding phrase
“I forgive you”.

– Valerie Parente (2-8-2025)

Scar Tissue

February 6, 2025February 7, 2025Leave a comment

Scar Tissue by Valerie Parente

You are designed
to heal from the inside out
it can be ugly on the surface
but you should be proud
because these marks take time
and show your defiance to pain
its the art of surviving
so unique to your shape.
You are your own hero
but don’t forget, you are human
and healing takes time
don’t make any sudden movements.
Know when to tend to wounds
and when pain’s at its end
remember, scars don’t bleed
unless you pick at them.

– Valerie Parente (2-6-2025)

Heart In My Throat

January 26, 2025Leave a comment

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)

Knives for Tears

May 10, 2024May 11, 2024Leave a comment

Knives for Tears by Valerie Parente

I had a nightmare
that I had knives
instead of tears
embedded under my eyes
from when someone stabbed me
but I survived.

I woke up
only to realize
it wasn’t a nightmare at all
but a beautiful sign
of my scathing resilience
when they thought I’d cry.

– Valerie Parente (5-10-2024)

Miniature House

April 19, 2024March 29, 2025Leave a comment

Miniature House by Valerie Parente

I’ve always been a homebody
so I built myself a miniature house
and I figured if I shrunk myself
I’d fit perfectly on a trophy shelf.

Divided into pretty little rooms
turned two floors into my world
made my bed like a good girl does
but didn’t lay in it like I should’ve.

Instead I brought you into that domain
after three years, you wanted out
and like a nail too close to a coffin
I hid the hammer so the blow would soften.

You were so hardened to affection
I wasn’t sure if you even loved me anymore
and when I asked for concrete proof
you gave me concrete from the floor to the roof.

The writing was on the wall
but those walls were caving in
so silly little me played illiterate
to make the collapse illegitimate.

A broken home makes sense in hindsight
’cause I wanted infrastructure in the ground
while you wanted to live on four wheels
… but that was never part of the deal.

Now I’m content in my own space
I can finally breathe a sigh of relief
in this perfect miniature house
that could never fit a spouse.

– Valerie Parente (4-19-2024)

Give Yourself Time… to Cherish the Given Time

June 17, 2022Leave a comment

Give Yourself Time… to Cherish the Given Time by Valerie Parente

Time really does heal the heart,
you can’t see it at the start
but someday those many moments of having them
will outweigh the one moment you lost them.

– Valerie Parente (6-17-2022)