Red.
It’s not pretty on me.
Not lipstick.
Not Valentines hearts.
Not cute red sweaters or “you’re so strong compliments.”

My red is the kind that stains.
That sticks.
That screams when I try to whisper.
Red is the colour of being left.
Not once.
But over and over and over.

My mum?
Yeah, my bio mum.
She left like I was a book she stopped
reading halfway through.
But she still sends postcards.
Like that makes it better.
Like writing, “Love, Mum” at the end
wipes away the years that she wasn’t there
to love me at all.

Do you know what it feels like
to get a message from a ghost
trying to pretend she’s still real?

I don’t read them anymore.
I just stare at the handwriting and
feel nothing.
Or maybe too much.
I can’t tell the difference anymore.

Red is the rage I swallow
because screaming makes people
uncomfortable.
Because no one wants to hear
about the kid sent to boarding school at 11
like an inconvenience.
Shipped off.
Silenced.
Discarded.

Dad didn’t even fight.
Just handed me over
to a woman who never saw me as hers
and made sure I knew it.

Red is the silence between us now.
And it’s loud.
So loud it drowns out the sound of me breaking.

But the worst red?
The darkest?

Wasn’t just what they did.
It was what they took.
Two men.
People I trusted.
People who smiled at me like I mattered
before they ruined me.

I said no.
I said stop.
But they didn’t hear me—
because they weren’t listening.
They were taking.

And one of them carved a word
into my skin.
A word I won’t repeat.
Because it’s still there.
Because when I shower, I still trace it.
Like it might come off this time.
It never does.

Red is that word.
That memory.
That version of me
that I don’t know how to bring back.
Sometimes I look in the mirror
and all I see is what they left behind.

I’m still here.
Yeah.
Breathing.
Just barely.

But I think about giving it all up.
More than I say out loud.
More than anyone would guess
by the way I smile in hallways
and laugh when I’m dying inside.

Red is the part of me that wants to vanish.
That writes poems
because if I don’t put it on the page,
I might not survive the weight.

Red is major depression.  
C-PTSD.
It’s waking me up and wondering why.
Why me.
Why still.
Why now.

It’s wanting someone to hold me and mean it.
Wanting my mum to show up
in something more than postage stamps and pretend love.
Wanting my dad to say,
“I was wrong. I should’ve kept you close.”
But knowing they won’t.
Knowing they didn’t.

Red is the truth no one wants to hear.
The pain they skip over in movies.
The girl in the back of the class
with scars on her heart and skin
who’s just trying to get through the day
without breaking apart in front of everyone.

Red is me.
All of me.
Hurting.
But still breathing.
Still here.

Not because I'm strong.
Not because I want to be.
But because even though everything in me says give up,
some tiny voice
buried under the rubble
still whispers:
Wait.

A sunrise that no one watches.
Unseen. Unappreciated. Neglected — it dispatches,
From the horizon, looking up at the sky,
Only to see the moon approaching by.

Was it love or desperation?
I can't remember the distinction.  

When you're starved
each crumb feels like grace.

Each small affection
a fervent offering
to a broken beggar.  

But at this point,  
I'll take what little
I can get.

time, the great unraveller,  
unwinding things into  
eternity with heartless determination.  
I have seen it lay rust along  
affections and arteries so  
that neither may flow or pump,  
but i always thought us, or  
hoped us, more rare  

that the constellations hung in your eyes  
would never dim for me,  
but guide me as they always had  
to home  
to you  
to us.  

perhaps you never dimmed  
only the constant erosion by minutes and hours  
chipped away my veneer, and the truth  
of me has made mutiny of your affections.  

when did I become someone you sleep beside  
and not with?  
the inches between us stretched out  
like country roads in winter, belying our beginning.  
my fingertips and your skin thick as thieves  
adventuring over the lines of your horizon  
each curve and mound and crevice  
the hot breath of exploration panting on our lips  

I can only fabricate excuses for so long,  
brushing off your brush offs,  
the turned shoulder,  
the recoil of my hand in the small of your back,  
the betraying hesitancy in your lips that  
wounds me like an unpracticed lover.  
when did you exchange your desire  
for obligations, wicked and sour?  

you blame it on chemistry  
hormones and pheromones  
molecules and valence bonds  
breaking apart our marital-structure.  
so I curse science and pray for alchemy  

I'm tired of sleeping  
In bed with you  
alone

Honey its been a while but i know you exist between heartbeats — not quite joy not quite grief, just the long inhale before either arrives.
you lived in a house where silence carved the hallways out of not being chosen so i know that you wear sound like an armour,
for when the room goes quiet the ghosts start speaking in full sentances and you are left with no language to bury them.
you answer messages in your head, smile at texts you never send and mourn connections like you've buried them with your own hands — even tho they are still alive
just not with you.
you wage a war between
reach out
and
stay safe.
between
i miss you
and
don't look at me.
you stand still.
mid-sentance
mid-dream
mid-you.




your house is a mess- your head is worse
wondering if this is healing or you are just getting really good at pretending so you bolt the doors
and you don't dare let anyone come in.
your mother used to say that the cruelest is the hour when you must beg the stars to remember your name — you'd then say
that the pain is a fruit, bitten too soon
and yet so sweet, so knowing.
because you know you must remember everything
and overcome it.
for if you don’t overcome it, you will always be the child whose soul never grew, the woman who kept apologizing for needing too little, and loving too much.

Long are overdue the deeds you owe to yourself.

-V