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victoria Dec 2023
I write to create a world where I belong.
I write to feel at peace within my surroundings.
I write to provide a safe space between my heart and my mind.
I write so that I don't judge.
I write so that I learn.
I write because knowledge makes me feel safe.
I write because to write, I have to read...... A LOT!
I write to calm the daily anxiety-
I write to calm the bouts of unbearable anxiety.
I write to my depression.
I write so that I can climb inside my own universe and lose myself in my imagination.
I write because my heart would surely break if I didn't.
I write not for you to read, but for me to purge.

I write because the child within me, demands that I stay true to myself.
I write because it's the only form of art that lifts me up, that quietens my hyper sensitivity and unpredictable mind.

I write because if I don't release my thoughts, they'll turn inward and manifest into black.
I write because words are powerful.
I write because it's my life and my choice.
I write because to not write, would mean to lie to my soul
I write for solitude, for happiness, for gratitude.
I write to belong
I write for love.
I write to save me from myself.
I write to protect myself from my most damaging enemy, my fear....
I write because it's my only way through to the other side.
But mostly I write, because it simply makes me happy....
Writing practice
victoria Aug 2023
And the man
Whose heart only opened
After a family size bucket from KFC
Had forgotten, love

When they tore away his boyfriend
Ripping out his entire reason for existence
An immense, cavernous void rushed in
Racing through his veins
A black hole
Dark
Incessant

Only acid swimming in the pit of his world
His appetite
Swollen with the strain of loss
that drains the last breath
The chest expanding
2,3,4 and hold
The inevitable last exhale
Like the puppy
he'd once witnessed die
in his younger years

But today is not his day

Salt tears, run towards his chin
And he wonders aloud
If they will enhance the flavour
seeping into the fried batter 
family size bucket
wrapped around the fear saturated skin
of the animal that deserved better

Or flow backwards?
Choking him into his early grave
He makes peace with either outcome
As yet another hole pops
in the only *****
he is unable to comfort

His deep fried donut world
Shades pulled down low
Sunken into daytime TV turning to night TV
Abandoned armchair side
Shakespeare pleading between the pages
His adoration for literature
Lost between the cracks in the blinds
Any hope of a love
Sunken beneath the board keys
He taps to replay his fantasies
The memories too distant now

The delivery man arrives
Extra pepperoni, chilli beef, mexican chicken, double cheese, suffed crust
His heart salavates for its next hit
Satiated finally
He falls into a deep slumber
And dreams of a time
Where his appetite
only yearns for love
victoria Apr 2023
Its 1983 and I'm home from school sitting cross legged on the carpet in my perfect place, where I could sky watch all night long, and the autumn sun rays shone through the branches of our front garden blossom tree, into our living room, illuminating a patch of carpet where I believed a whole other world existed. Call me crazy, a lot of people do, but I used to truly believe there were other tiny worlds on each carpet strand. Complete with microscopic creatures or miniscule humans like Fairies. All living in fluffy homes with pets and pretty clothes.

A wide sunbeam would light up the specks of dust giving a brown sipea tinge, and I would try to catch each one in my tiny hands whilst I sat counting until you came home each evening.
My older brother told me that dust is just old human skin, mainly from the dead, in his attempt for me to stop breathing, but it just made me want it more. I wanted to breathe in each person's history as a part of me - maybe then I wouldn't feel so alone.

The scent of our old sofa, the glass corner that housed your whisky and Café Creme cigars. I'd trace the pattern for hours of the embroidered vines, their flowers and leaves that were immortalised under the pane. Destined to remain as the day of manufacture. Dark green, homely, comforting.
The surrounding fabric that faded with the daylight and all the New Years Eve parties that my parents threw, filling my sunken heart with a helium like euphoria
Those that I tried but failed to count down the days for
Where the adults would age backwards
Just for a few hours
Forget they had husbands, wives and young children
And my brain would fizz with an uncapped frenzied elation, from the smoke filled lights and music, that would bewray my constant sadness

The turntable blaring out ABBA, Billy Joel, Meatloaf, sounds of the sixties and all the music I now associate with happiness.
Our mothers swaying to Dancing Queen, nostalgic sadness seeping from their white wine eyes and aging skin. But oh they were so beautiful.

Me and my best friend would creep down from my bedroom and hide under the party table which was clothed in a long, crisp white Christmas fabric. We'd steel nuts, sausage rolls, fizzy pop and half eaten pork pies.
Dressed as Mickey and Minney mouse in our reversible sweat tops so indicative of the 80s

I knew right then, that my life would be altered by substances and acquaintances of the night
How I adored the chaos, the energy, the laughter and looseness of it all. Everyone smoked back then, completely care free and drank whatever was lying around, blissfully unaware that it would catch up with them one day, everything always does, in the end.
Our liquor cabinet had the most intoxicating scent.
When no one was around, I'd stick my head in and sit with my face pressed up against the bottles. I loved all the bright labels and colours. I would pick up the crystal glasses one by one and pretend to sip all ladylike the way they did in films, my little finger held out as i mimed imaginary conversations.
"How do you do?"
"Yes I enjoyed the show immensely"
"I'd just love to host next year's party, do come" 
I felt so grown up.

But an average evening saw me sat upon your knee, swinging my 7 year old legs, blissfully happy and loving you as fiercely as I feared you. You'd make my puppets come alive and i really believed.
I still do.
You were magic to me. I adored you.

It's a Wednesday night, which was MAS*H night and in 1983 the final episode played with 105.9 million watching. Too young in years to appreciate the tear in your eye, I watched blissfully unaware, just so happy to be sat up late with the adults.
I'd give anything to go back to that night, just for a few minutes. I'd warn you that in just a few years everything would end. That both our worlds would dissolve and within the sediment, a great heartbreak would settle in and live unwanted forever.
That we needed to spend every second together making memories.
Oh the innocence of it.

I'm sitting here  now, thinking about that night, about my fears, about our sofa and about you.
As Hawkeye and the Korean war fills my screen night after night, my eyes fill with you.
What happened to us?
Why did you let go of my hand?
The saddest day of my entire life

But I never stopped loving you, not for a single heart beat and I'm grateful for these memories that fill my pages, meaningless to anyone else, but meaning the world to me.
Some say you don't deserve my love.
They say you were less than a father.
They're wrong.
I'm ashamed to say that i don't often defend you.
But I declare it here, now.
On this page right this second
That you were everything I could've dreamed of
That the first eleven years of my life were so much more than I can ever articulate.
And how much I thank you for being my daddy...
I missed you
I miss you still.

(RIP 01/12/2018)
victoria Jan 2023
Poem: Empty where you lay

Two decades and one year
Ruptured by my heart

I watch
immobilised
as my frontal lobe detaches and slips out under my door
Too afraid of my agony
Of my actions performed in the darkness
It abandons me
Protecting the parts left attached
of the constant-

-What would you look like now?
Sound like now?
Would you be happy?
Lonely?
At peace with yourself?

Would you possess the heart of a warrior?
Or a peace maker?
Soul of angel?
Or just the mind of a poet?
                     ...............................
I apprehend your second chance of this life
It cracks my spine and spits out splintered regrets
The perfect parents you'll be given
Survival of the fittest
I pull at my lips to form a smile
Because I love you-
Because I know this is a better path for you

I gouge out my eyes
And push them inside my heart

Every space you occupied
Each song you sang
Every performance
I am there in another land
I've memorised every word
Felt every beat

On the pitch at football
Playing with friends
Twisted limbs
Tears hidden beneath my feet
Your first love
First broken heart
I feel them all.....

I fabricate your sadness
As I scream into the cave of my mind
I wretch and choke out for Aphrodite

But she is elsewhere, having cocktails with her Goddess companion, Isis,
in celebration of their latest triumphs
For those hand picked to fulfill their hearts desires
Who live without empty echos
And chaotic minds
Those with a stillness, percolated deep
Carrying auras of golden warmth
Mistaken by the humming bird as nature's
Glowing nectar

I fear those women more than anything in this-
my life
I run
So my jealousy remains caged
                     ............................
I find my frontal lobe at the bottom of a bottle
Sedated in sediment
My local pub say they'd go under without my custom
A weird, turbulent, symbiotic relationship
Gnawing into my desperation

If I were a Disney character
the film by now
nearing it's final scenes
There would be some joyful moral to my sadness
I'd be rescued from myself and live
happily ever after
No voids
No aches
No emptiness

But my scenes are a deadly, grave reality
My cheeks soaked with a desperation
To know
To feel
To love
The fight was lost before gender picked you
Not a fingernail nor strand of hair
for me to swallow
Nothing of you resides within me
Just an unknown
Silent wailing

Self punishment mocks my fragile mind
As it wills me to imagine your scent
Eyes burnt shut
Your shadow runs past freely
Faint laughter falls and stings my lobes
It belongs to you
I know it is you

Knees cracked
Praying for a God, any God
Stitch the fragments of my brain
Begging Aphrodite or her peers for a second chance
Any mythology will do
Desperation knows no limits

BUT NOTHING......................................

Just painful silence of empty echos
My womb forever
................................Empty where you lay.
victoria Sep 2022
Poem, The old wheelbarrow

"She felt forgotten, antiquated, awkward
Ill-fitted, incapable, unsuitable, worthless, barren, meaningless, mediocre, unessential and trivial.
AND A BIG FAT INCONVENIENCE.........

Her capacity for anything and everything dwindling as an over ripened apple loses its juice, any strength drained, sapped, starved and strained each time a new **** began it's desperate life, each flower that bloomed before her, somehow rendered her invisible.

Held together by the rust that life eventually bestows upon us all.
Tyres deflated, wheels that no longer held hunger for new adventures.
Nuts and bolts that had long since argued and permanently fallen out with one another, the rust settled between them enduringly as the woodworm to its dinner.

She was a sorry excuse for a once beautiful, strong and hard working wheelbarrow and she had almost given up................

✨️Ahhhhhhhh, but her wisdom!!!! All those years.......What of that?????✨️

She'd always listened,
absorbed,
but never knowingly spoke of this
What she had yet to learn,
Was that she had housed each tiny living organism.
She'd provided honey for the bees, and in doing so, life for the world.
She hadn't set any world records,
(No)

She hadn't knowingly saved any lives,
(Yes)
but she'd protected,
given out her wisdom freely
and all with so much love.

Absorbed carbon dioxide and fizzed out oxygen.
Given love in abundance and rarely asked for any in return
She had given a safe space for the thoughts, secrets and words of her sapling flowers

She'd been self sufficient, self reliable, independent, indestructible, valuable, knowledgeable, needed, wanted, desired, capable.... Oh. So. Capable.

The rust, the flat tires, the weakness of strength both in body and in mind, is just a part of being the best version that you can be.
To carry on regardless for yourself and for your flowers."

***It's taken me all **** day, but I no longer see a worn out and batteted wheelbarrow.
I see a vessel of immense strength, determination and an abundance of love ❤️
victoria Jul 2022
The sand beneath my feet
That wormed itself
Then burried under my chest
Where my heart decided the days fate
Was always just full of the food caught between the Devil's teeth
And the space God reserved for those with a passion of falling.

His lengthy and greesy hand prints
Invaded my retinas
And I'd be left silently weeping
Praying
That he does no more harm

If he'd demolished marshmallows
Like a child
The feeling would be soft
Fillowy clouds under foot
Your mother's swimming costume
The first feathers of a new born owl

But he'd gnawed at the bones of an animal deserving better
And I'd feel the sharp glass filled with despair
Ripping my stomach and the spaces
between my ribs like drops of acid
The edges sharp
The middles angry

And as time went by
And the shadow of him followed me
From Hill to Hill
Mountain to Mountain
River through to the Oceans
I realised
I knew beyond the bees sting
And the bite of the apple
That I was an unwilling desciple ....

How the night would steel my throat
And bargain with the moon to leave my voice behind,
as tiny as the pebbles that the sea spat out with embarrassment

And I would just give in
Worn and torn
Exhausted from my fingertips,
screaming
And holding up my hands
To any higher power
To please take me away
Even if for a moons changing
To the summers light

Powerless to breathe
And the grains of sand
Laughing at our stupidity
Will bury themselves until the next self sented beings
That will carry our shame
To their finger tips
And melt like the devil
Who came to dinner
And ate those that deserved better.
victoria Jun 2022
The tears that sting solitary sadness into my eyes and burn fear down my cheeks
will define my years long before their time,
upon my skin for you.

Each bird song
Each summer breeze
Will permeate my ears with a knowing
That I'll lose you the way a mother loses her calf
Only in the opposite
Cries only accepted by the moon and her tide

And my skin with the memories of you
Will fracture, crack and fall open
Little fire flies will zoom out
And expire in your memory

I will evaporate into the trees
And I'll be heard only when the wind
gets angry, frustrated and gales will
rush past ripping out my finger nails,
So they may settle to where your essence sleeps.

Terror and a deep sadness
will surround.
Stalactites will form in your loss
Drip
Drip
Drip

And my essence will be swallowed whole....
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