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Victoria Kiely Jan 2014
It was midday in London on an afternoon of early spring. The streets were flooded with equal parts rainwater and people as everybody rushed through their busy lives. People easily forgot to look up, and often failed to notice the change in scenery as the bus sped along.
He occupied two seats on a lonely street car travelling down Aberdeen. One seat held him tightly to the window that was to his left, the other was taken by his various possessions. With him, he carried his black, customary briefcase, his dripping umbrella that tied just below the halfway point, and the large tan trunk he had collected from the antique shop. They sat stacked on top of one another with the trunk serving as a base for the structure. Each time the street car emitted the gentle thud that accompanied the many bumps from the *** holes, he felt tense as he readied himself to catch the old umbrella.
His hair hung down to the side, dripping slowly from the rain into his eyes, and progressively further down his face. Hands shaking, lips blue, he looked down at his shoes. The holes were visible but unnoticeable. Slicks of water formed as he pressed his feet further down off of the seat. He had known for months now that these shoes were about finished, but he couldn’t seem to find the money to replace them. He had been late to pay the rent to his small apartment for the past three months.
“I just need another month,” he would begin. “Just another month, I swear. I have interviews with a few guys this week, they seem promising.” But there were truly very few interviews at all; in fact, he had found himself without work or word for months now.  Still he insisted that he would be able to find something, anything, to satisfy the rent for the coming month.
He had been a stock broker all his life. He had worked for companies varying in legality and prestige, all of which he had done well in. Throughout his twenties and thirties, he had maintained these jobs with fewer problems than he had had in any other area of his life. Until the stock market crash, he had been successful in all aspects. After the crash, however, nobody trusted stocks or stock brokers. He had found himself without business within days.
Although he had grown to loath the occupation over time because of all of the lying, the indecency and the equivocation, he loathed his financial state more with each passing day. He was used to fine linen, tall ceilings and silver spoons. None of that had followed him to his new lifestyle. He could hardly afford the food that required the spoon now, anyway.
He looked out the window to the greying day littered with clouds. People milled about, blocking the rain with their arms. The street car came to a halt beside an old cinema.
A woman and her child emerged from the black awning that draped over the entrance of the theater. She held a newspaper over her daughters’ head, taking care to cover her so as not to get her wet. The mother laughed visibly and crossed in front of the street car holding her daughters hand. They boarded.
“How much for one ride each?” She asked the driver with a kind, simple voice that reminded the man of his mother.
“It’s three dollars for your ride, and I’ll let her on for free since it’s raining” The driver replied.
She looked down and smiled. “Thank you very much.”
She trailed her daughter along and sat a few rows ahead of him. She sat her daughter down first next to the window, and then continued to slid in next to her, taking the aisle seat. She pointed out the window and whispered something inaudible to her daughter – she giggled lightly. She continued, her smile growing, her daughters face mirroring her own. Finally, they each erupted in laughter. He had not heard one word they had said.
It was true that they seemed, in every sense, underprivileged, but it was just as clear that they were not poor. Neither felt sorry for themselves, neither seemed to care that they too had holes in their shoes, or that they hadn’t had the money for an umbrella. They laughed and smiled as though they were the ones who had had the fine linen, tall ceilings, or silver spoons.
At first glance, he had felt sorry for them – their ripped and wet clothing, their makeshift umbrella. It seemed now though, that the longer he looked at them, the more he seemed to realize the sad truth. It was he who had been poor his whole life, not the lowly people he once watched walking down the street through his office window, the type who sat in front of him on this very train.
He had never been married, as he was too busy with his work and ambitions. He had never known the joy of a child. He had missed so many opportunities to find the happiness that he saw in the woman before him. He also knew that he had never wondered about any of those people’s stories. He had never cared to.
His stop came and went, and still he watched the woman and her child. The woman sang nursery rhymes to the girl, squealing with joy and amazement, as the street car carried on. Finally, the woman pushed the button to signal the driver to stop. She stood and collected the few things she had brought with her, including a coat and the newspaper she had used previously. She took her daughters hand and exited the doors that hesitated, then shut tightly behind her.
Again the pavement began to pass beside him as he looked out the window. His eyes stirred, then focused on something resembling paper that had fallen to the ground recently; the edges were hardly damp on the soaked floor.
He slid into the seat kin to him, bent over, and picked up the slip of paper. He unfolded it and found it to be a picture of the woman and her child from moments before.
In the picture, the woman is sitting in a field with tall blades of grass that look as though they had not been cut for years. The light is dim, the sun is rising. Her teeth are showing in a brilliant smile, her face young and carefree. Her daughter, who must not have been more than two in this picture, sits in her lap, laughing at something that can’t be seen in the photograph. The mother is pointing to it, and the daughters eyes follow. In many ways, it looked like the scene he had just witnessed.
On the back of the photo in long, curled writing, he read her handwriting: “It is always darkest before dawn”.  With those six words, he knew that he had wasted much of his life in dedication to tangible riches, when the real treasures were those that you could not necessarily count or produce. By way of strangers in a lonely street car, one poor man had discovered value in things that do not hold worth.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
The rain beat the pavement as the man ran to a nearby bus shelter holding a newspaper over his ragged hair. The rain hitting the glass was nearly deafening, but there was comfort in the sound. A public transit bus comes and goes, recognizing the bleak figure immediately. This was, after all, his commonplace - the closest thing he had to a home in the past two years.
"Get a job", people would say, as if it were ever really that easy.
He had been diagnosed with depression after his wife’s passing nearly four years ago and suffered alone as he mourned and pushed through what most people see as a normal life. On the outside, it was unapparent how miserable he had become, unable to share the world with another as he had now for so many years. He came to his cubical on time each day, he worked until the late afternoon had came and went, and he left without a word. He was the unnoticed face in a crowd.
All at once, he lost his drive to live his life. He stopped showing up to work, he did not pay his bills, he didn’t answer the door or the phone. The clear print reading “EVICTION NOTICE” had meant nothing to him. He took only the essential things with him as he left behind an empty house behind. The last thing he put into his bag was a copy of the Odyssey, worn now after so many years of attentive reading.
The tattered copy sat open on his crossed legs, the moment passing by. The walls of the shelter sheild him from the wind and welcome him into their embrace. the adequecy of lighting was questionable as the sun descends and the world loses its colour. A streetlamp flickers to life and casts an ominous glow onto the street beneath it. He continues to read about the long journey of a man trying to find his way home, not unlike himself. What’s happening on the page is disconnected from thepart of the world that he is trapped on; he watches his secret world become a vivid painting beneath his hands and turns the page.
"Hello," said a man waiting for another bus to take him to a far off place.
He didn’t respond.
"I take it you like the book, judging by the condition…" The man tried again to grasp his attention. His dark figure loomed on the other side of the glass.
"I do", he said.
"What’s your name, son?"
He paused, turning to fully look at the man. “Its Tristan,” he said, contemplating the man as he stepped into the light. The man shuffled into the shelther gingerly, leaving behind the loud clack of his cane. His clothes chaffed against the skin on his legs, and he carried his fedora in his hand. He creased his face in pain as he sat beside Tristen.
"My name is Connor Wright", he breathed heavily, struggling to continue. "I have a spare copy of that book myself, laying around at home. No use to myself. Would you want to have it? I can bring it to you the same time next week"
"How do you know I will return it?"
"Perhaps I don’t want it back"
The silence stretched. “I would like that very much, sir” replied Tristan.
A dark blue bus pulled up to the stop without warning and stirred the stillness in the air. The headlights shone in their eyes and caught the edge of the mans thick-framed glasses. “I will see you next week then”
Each week came and passed as Mr. Wright began to bring Tristan books frequently, exchanging each new book for the last. “Why do you treat me with such kindness when I have nothing to give?” Tristan would ask him each week, never recieving an answer.
A year passed by in the presence of the silent agreement. Mr. Wright would often bring Tristan a warm container filled with soup, or a sandwhich left over from lunch to accompany his reading for the night.
On a cold night in april, Tristan waited at the bus stop for the greying man. He spotted him across the street as he waved to him. Tristan, flashing his increasingly more common smile, returned his vivid wave in the direction of Mr. Wright.
"Hello Tristan", he began as always with a bright smile. His distinct aroma filled the hollow bus shelter - a mix of burnt wood, but also new paper and musk, and apparent paradox. After a brief conversation, Tristan took the book out of Mr. Wright’s frail hands.
The bus arrived shortly thereafter and Mr. Wright borded the exhausted vehical, taking his time going up the short stoop of stairs.
This book was rather unlike the other books that Mr. Wright had given him in the past months. His books had usually been full of journeys abundant with creatures, or filled to the brim with a quaint scenery, embodying an allegory in a far off place. The book he held in his hands was called “Darkness Visible”. It was a self-help book for those in the winter of their lives, much as Tristan was, though he hated to admit it.
He opened the page of the book and the spine cracked as the smell of fresh ink and paper filled his senses. This book was new.
He read with curiousity at first, which later turned to deep interest, and later still, turned into inspiration. The following week, Tristan returned this book to Mr. Wright as he told him that he would not be returning to the bus stop with any more new books. “I wish to see you again in the future”, he said, handing Tristan a slip of paper with his name and phone number on it.
Many years passed by and the two men kept regular contact, discussing the endevours of Tristan and his success in his new life.
"Doctor Spense, you have a visitor" his secretary informed him in her usual airy tone.
"Send them in, please"
A man with strong lines creased into his face turned the door handle and entered his office at Kingston University. Commonalities were exchanged and the man fought back a solemn look as he took a seat across from Tristan. The armchair engulphed him.
"Doctor Spense, I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Connor Wright passed away this morning as he succumed to his long fight against cancer", he spoke as though he had said these words in practise. "I am here because you were included in his will and we need to speak about legalities".
Mr. Wright had left him his entire collection of books, including that first copy of the Odyssey that Tristan had cherised so many years earlier when he had had nothing else. As he opened the familliar book, an envelope fell to the ground.
He stooped to the ground to pick up the white sheet and put it in the pile of other loose pages when he saw in handwriting, “To Dr. Tristan Spense”.
He read the words and tears filled his eyes, prickling at the corners and pooling in the clear canvas of skin before his jaw.

"The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty…" - Mother Teresa
I treated you kindly holding the knowledge that you would have nothing to give in return because I saw something I once saw within myself during the darker days of my time. I helped you because I knew your soul would rot and perish in a sickly way should you go unnoticed. I helped you because I hate faith in you and knew you had the kind of illness that could be taken away with the love of a friend. I hope that I have been able to give you the medicide loneliness, desparity and hopelessness and that your cabinets are stocked full. Remember where you have come from, and remember that it is always darkest before dawn.
Your friend always,
Connor Wright
1.9k · Jan 2016
Age Gap - Dialogue (Prompt)
Victoria Kiely Jan 2016
The body was quickly covered by a black sheet, but Tommy had still seen it, and the image seemed to stick to his eyes like a melted Popsicle. He did not feel sad, or angry, or even curious – Tommy felt nothing at all except wonder at the fact that you could exist one moment, and not the next.
“Hey there,” said the tall man in blue. He wore a badge on his shirt that said ‘police’.
“Hi,” said Tommy, nervously looking up at the man. He felt as though he should not have been looking at the body, as though it were forbidden.
“What’s your name, son?”
“My name is Tommy and I live down the street,” he said, the words spilling out of his mouth. He felt that he needed to explain himself. “I was just riding my bike when...”
“Did you see what was under that tarp?” the man asked, pointing at the blanket. The body had since disappeared, but Tommy knew that the body had just been taken away so others wouldn’t see. Tommy didn’t respond, but the officer nodded.
“Do you want to see something cool?” said the policeman, and Tommy nodded once more.
The policeman walked over to his car and dipped inside, ducking his head under the ledge of the door frame. He looked at Tommy and smiled, clicked a few buttons, and then suddenly there were bright colours, not unlike the colours Tommy had seen at carnivals.
10 minute prompt to write dialogue between two individuals with an age gap
1.6k · Mar 2016
To my abuser
Victoria Kiely Mar 2016
For a long time after, I hated you
I avoided saying your name or thinking about you
I pretended that what had happened wasn’t real
Or that my feelings were just blown out of proportion
Or that I didn’t exist

And then
One night
I reached
Across
My bed
For you
And you weren’t there
And I only hated that you weren’t there

I cried because I didn’t want to want you there
And I don’t want to need you
But every day I’m struggling to keep you out of mind
And I try so hard to keep on hating you
But I don’t, I don’t have the energy to hate you

Instead, now, I miss you
And instead, I hate myself for missing you
Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
The wind blew through hollowed out buildings like lungs taking in air in shallow breaths, rattling through the skeletons of forgotten structures. A gust kicked up loosened dirt from the path beneath his feet.  Alone and desolate, the streets of this lost town looked as though they had not been traveled upon for many years now, but still they managed to look almost full – like the space could not contain the contents of what it used to be.
Here stood the ruins, a place Kieran had come to know quite well since his discovery of it in his first year of high school. Though it meant something different to him now than it had then, he still kept quiet of its whereabouts to many.
He used to come to stop feeling, to stop thinking of the things he was surrounded by each day. Now, some days, he had trouble remembering how to feel at all. To him, this place was the only way he could feel what it was like to be himself, or to remember the things that had comprised who he had been in the past years.
Things had changed now, of course. The years had crawled past, many without making very much of an impact on anybody or anything. He felt that the only thing that had gotten him through the tougher times was his first love, Briardale. Briar had been the only person he had shown this place.
He could still remember it now, the first time he had brought her here. He remembered seeing her while she took it in for the first time, wondering what she was seeing; how the ruins had looked through her eyes. Unlike most people who he had known to have seen such a dead place, Briar had surprised him.
“I like it,” she had said, with a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. “It’s as though nothing outside of this is real. It’s like a dream”. Her dark hair bled into the still darker scenery, her composite disappearing into the outlines of the tall building. He knew then that she had understood.
“I like it, too” Kieran replied, watching her without shame as she admired the look of the skyline in the late day. He knew she was completely alone in her eyes, and that she probably didn’t hear his response, that she was hardly listening.
Finally, she turned to him. She opened her mouth to speak, and time slowed. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked, still smiling with wonder.
He knew that he had to tell her, that she probably already knew of his feelings towards her. She was toying with this thought – perhaps even considering it.
He moved closer to her, pacing slowly, intentions clear. He licked his lips. He swallowed audibly, the nerves defacing the moment and nearly spoiling it. He drank her beauty in, allowing his eyes to wander greedily over what he wanted but did not yet have. He wanted her, but it was more than that. He needed her. He realized then –
“I love you”, he whispered almost inaudibly, sharing another secret with her, the woman he had watched grow since they were but youthful and naïve children. “I brought you here because I love you”.
She replied by taking his hand and leading him closer, pushing her into the frame of the broken building behind them. He inched closer, looking at her, beginning with her eyes and slowly moving towards her lips. Their noses brushed and he smelt what he knew to be her scent: burnt cigarettes and pine, a winters evening.
She stared just as intensely at his lips. She had inclined her head so as to become closer still. Kieran could feel her soft breath on his chin. She raised her eyes to meet his and whispered “I love you, too”, and finally, their lips met and crossed the line between friends and lovers.
Kieran steadied himself, reminiscing on the moment, but reminding himself that things had changed. He began walking towards what used to be the old school, the flag still billowing in the autumn wind. He traveled up the stairs, creaking under his every step.
Finally he had reached the top. Standing on what passed as a roof, he looked down onto the desolate town. He watched the dust overturn and fall, the unstable buildings sway. He edged closer to the verge of the building, all the while still watching. Kieran looked directly below, wondering what it would be like if he jumped, wondering if he would survive the fall. Wondering how anybody had survived, and weather anybody lived in this life at all.


Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
The less-than-tepid air stirred as Kieran walked the streets of his town, passing familiar shops and people all the while. He felt as though nothing held the ability to surprise him anymore. Each day seemed the same: he awoke with a heavy and slow start, went about his errands and studies, finished his tasks and went to the coffee shop on the corner of Adelaide and First Street, where he would take his usual seat by the window.
Today seemed to be no different. He entered the Red Brick Café, moving through the stiff door. He ordered his usual black coffee and placed his things on the table nearest to the window.
His load was slightly heavier today, large textbooks and journals weighing him down. Though he was only sixteen, he had already begun showing interest in studies far surpassing the average teenage parameters of notice. Before him lay the studies of Nietzsche and Marx, as well as several sheets of paper with his own scrawled handwriting, denoting his findings.  Kieran had surpassed the term “average” years ago, even if his father had failed to notice it.
       “Maybe if you would stop asking so many questions and started doing the crap they asked you to in school, you would pass your **** classes” he could recall his father saying to him after the last term.
Even still, he had not been the type to feel the need to please others. Kieran had always been focused on satisfying himself, his questions and his hunger for knowledge. He stopped at nothing to satisfy these basic needs.
        “Medium Black?” the woman had called after preparing his coffee. He retrieved the cup, mismatched and morphed, as they all were in this store. It was part of what he had liked most about it – the mugs served in late summer with the Christmas patterns, the coarse orange glasses that stood on the same shelf. None of the dish wear matched, and he thought this was exactly what gave the shop its character.
         He walked to the single leather couch pulled in front of the table overlooking the window. Through said window laid a perfect view of the people walking past on Adelaide Street. Often times, he had sat in this spot for hours simply watching people milling through the lives they wish they did not live, wondering all along whether they would decide to change.
He opened his new copy of The Introduction to Karl Marx, the crisp cover yielding to his rough hands. The smell wafted from the fresh paper – he had only bought this book a few days ago down the street at the bookstore. Kieran always enjoyed the smell of fresh parchment.
         His coffee had grown cold by the time his wandering eyes had bothered to look up from the page.          Outside the window, the street had grown quite dark, dark enough for the street lamps to have turned on. In the light below the nearest lamp, it had become evident that the first snow had begun to fall softly, slowly, and silently outside of his attention.
Then he saw her. Her auburn hair had been victim to the winter winds and lay on her shoulders unevenly, glistening with new snow. Her tall boots fell above her knees, her jacket cinched just below her waist line. She smiled and looked at the lantern overhead, laughing, admiring. The lines around her eyes creased as she playfully pouted and straightened her scarf, slanted in the cold. She pointed to the door of the café as she approached with her friends.
        She entered and he continued to watch as she striped her gloved fingers, exposing each finger with remarkable delicacy. The light did her a terrible favour and made her already notable features more prominent. Her previously dainty expression held a note of subtle seduction that Kieran doubted that she knew she possessed.
        She stood in front of the counter waiting to order.  “Grab me a seat?” she asked her friend as they slipped into the back room. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled pleadingly at the others.
        “But of course, my lady Briardale”, the other replied mockingly with an equal smile.
         Kieran caught himself before she turned her head further, before she could catch him eyeing her. He quickly flipped the page of his book to look occupied, and she shifted her glance. He raised his eyes, peeking through his lashes at her once more.
         *Briardale.
Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
The house dwarfed everything on the street. It was evidently quite old, but in good condition. The once white bricks were stained with years beating from the rain and wind, the windows unclear. Ebony frames supported the doors and glass windows, complete with matching shutters. A wrap-around porch hugged the left side of the house’s structure tightly. The house had a classical type of beauty. In its stupor from the long years, it still stood strong; still, it had intimidated nearly everybody in the small town that encompassed it.
        The first car parked on the driveway said enough; it was an Oldsmobile, a strong, classic car – the type of car you really only see in movies anymore. The others that followed were all newer, luxury cars. Each looked to be worth more than Kieran might ever have to his name. This was more than a guess.
He had walked past this house many times, almost always curiously peering in through the windows. He wondered sometimes what the people inside were like, what they did with their spare time, whether or not they had secret lives that they kept from one another. The term ‘enigma’ came to mind when he tried to fill the blank silhouettes he had seen in the window with pictures. He had never quite been able to get that image right. He had only found out how wrong he had been about the owners of the place once he had met her.
He waded through the deep snow surrounding the path he had known to be apparent on warmer days. Approaching the light steps vacating the doorway, he noticed that a flickering light had been emitting itself from the uppermost window adjacent to the balcony.
In the letter that he had found under the slip of his door frame earlier that day, Kieran had been instructed to enter the house without bothering to knock at precisely quarter past the hour of eight. He had found the request to be odd, but he had been victim to curiosity, as he always was when it came to Briardale.
He turned the **** of the dark oak door before him. The step below him gave an alarming creak as he shifted his weight forward, making him stop. Again, he began to pass the cusp between her world and his own. He padded forward and headed towards the stairs. His heavy boots thudded on the floor beneath and left a rather hollow noise that echoed through the large expanse.
As he crept up the stairs, his curiosity and excitement heightened. The top of the staircase seemed both close and far away as the space between him and the flickering light dwindled. He heard the sound of contemporary music flowing in the dark. It curled into his ears and under his flesh; he felt a chill in the air as his senses began to tingle.
Finally he had reached the top of the staircase. He paused for a minute, allowing the moment to sink in. He stared at the door, ajar and alluring, as she and all she did always were.
“Why the hesitation?” she asked, almost inaudibly between the music and her soft spoken voice.
He parted his lips ever so slightly and licked the dry edges. He swallowed and hoped that she had not heard. He continued forward and pushed open the door tentatively.
She lifted her eyes to his in the mirror before her. “I’ve been waiting”
He looked at Briardale’s sketched figure, outlined by what looked to be decades of lit candles. Her dark hair shone brilliantly in their wake. A deep red robe encircled her, wrapping her like a present. Her bare legs were tucked under the vanity daintily.
“Come closer” she whispered. She turned down the music.
Kieran traveled the short distance between them and allowed for a small smile to take his lips. “You look beautiful” he said.
“Thank you”
He placed his weathered hands on her soft shoulders and felt the difference between the two. He looked deeply in her eyes in the vanity mirror. She put the brush she had been holding down. She turned to meet his gaze.
She glanced up at him subtly, almost bashfully. She stood and walked towards the bed. Her robe fell, and decidedly she had neglected to wear anything but.  He followed.
Together they sunk into the bed, the scent of clean linen surrounding the two of them. She took his hand, and innocently guided it towards her face. She brought her own fingers to touch his slight beard that had developed fully and fruitfully. She kissed him lightly on the lips.
He knew then that no other person could make him feel the way that he did. She comprised of a thousand shades and colours, and he wanted to learn each one by title. He wanted to know each part of her. She had gained the ability to grasp his life in the palm of her hand; to make him feel as though he was the one who was vulnerable and needed protecting. Loving her was like standing at the top of a cliff and leaping, the free-falling feeling encompassing and grand. Loving her was like waiting for a the subway train to take away your sorrows as you walk purposefully towards its oncoming traffic, and it stopping before you have a chance to jump. Briardale was his split-second happiness after the fall, his second chance in an unforgiving world.
1.1k · Oct 2013
The Veil of Perfection
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Sunkissed skin lays over you like a veil/
Freckles like silver lining details gone/
Unnoticed by the author. Two green eyes/
Stare back at mine and say everything/
Without recognized language. Blue jeans/
White shirt; a simple pleasure in simple/
Wrapping. Pale lips whispering subtle things/
Secrets of “I love you” and “I need you”/
Thick hair tangled at the nape of your neck/
Strong hands learning the crevice of new land/
We brave the world alone, a heart without/
A home to call our own, on these cold nights/
990 · Oct 2013
If furniture could talk
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
If furniture could talk we would all be ******; the things we do behind closed doors are not attractive. The couch would tell others of our Friday-night-mishaps and of sounds we learn to make deep in the night.
If furniture could talk, we would all be ******; what we say is not acceptable. Venom drips from the lips of snakes we allow into our homes, seeping into the walls.
If furniture could talk, we would all be ******; we do things in solitude that we do not wish others to see. Contorted faces, hands in places, we know they should not be.
Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
“I can’t,” she breathed.
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t do this.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, disbelieving. He moved to take her free hand that lay at her side. She drew it away.
“You’re not listening; I can’t do this anymore, any of it. I don’t want to continue on pretending that everything is okay when it isn’t, pretending that you’re okay and that we’re okay when we aren’t,” she said, beginning to sob. “I can’t pretend that things are going to get better when I don’t know that.”
“I am getting better,” he replied, “I’m trying.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I know you do, so why act this way? Why leave when I’m beginning to change? Why go when I am doing this for you, does none of it matter to you?” Kieran cried, “Is there nothing more that I can do to make me what it is that you want?”
“It is exhausting, waiting for you to get back to who you were, to see you struggle the way you do. I can’t watch you try and fail over and over again,” said Briar. “I can’t watch you decay and raise from the ashes only to see that you are what you are born from – that you have not changed at all.”
“Well what then, do you expect me to do it alone?”
“You’ll have to”, she said between tears as she stood. She turned lucidly and walked past the chair where he sat; leaving the television they had been watching to entertain itself. The door creaked as she heaved, and all too quickly, she was gone.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
All of these questions bubbling up like/
Incessant bubbles in a boiling ***,/
That I don’t think want to be heard. I feel the/
Way you look at me, like I’m waiting to/
Break, come apart at the seams. Avoiding/
me with dull, effortless acts to conceal/
It. What I don’t understand, is why you forced me/
To be this way and then run away from/
It - imagineer of Frankenstein’s image/
856 · Oct 2013
When We Collide
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
When we collide
It’s as though we’ve become
The eye of the storm
As we intertwine as one
Fleeting flesh, both cold and warm
As we collide
The barren parts of my being
Reside in your senses
Yours for seeing
And transform, implode
Into something
both new and unknown
Colliding is, if only briefly
A moment
Where I expect things to change,
For things to get better.
I think parts of my life will rearrange
Laying spent in your sweater
And then there is the collision,
The moment of impact
Where I steal myself
Look at the facts,
(Although abstract).
You are yours,
And I am mine.
We collide only to part once more.
846 · Jan 2014
Jump (Short Story)
Victoria Kiely Jan 2014
Once, as I was leaving home waiting for the subway, I experienced something that scared me. There was a moment, however brief, that I contemplated jumping. I could hear the sound of the subway train approaching, echoing through the long tunnel. I saw all the men returning from work, all of the children with their parents, but nobody saw me. I wanted, in that moment, to jump.
I approach the thick yellow line outlining the danger that I sought. I heard my breath accelerate, then catch. The train passed me, and I felt the wind pick up my hair and brush it to the side, away from my face. I cried because I was reminded again of what it was to be alive.
A few months had passed, and I found myself at the same platform. This time I was not alone. You and I heard the whir of the approaching train; we could feel the familiar movement of stiff air. You were leaving, and we knew that we had but seconds to say goodbye.
You kissed me. You took my face, in those hands I always loved, and kissed me like it was the last time. The wind picked up my hair, but this time, it was you who brushed it to the side, off of my tear stained face. I felt the pull, the motion that was made by that moment. That was the last time we kissed.
I boarded the subways and you walked towards your platform. In that moment, I wished that I had jumped.
This is non-fiction.
829 · Oct 2013
Delicacy
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
You are a delicacy - I struggle to find the median between enjoying you entirely too quickly and not experiencing you at all our of fear that you will disappear. I want to indulge in your fine pleasures and forget the meaning of refinement; I want to swallow you whole just to have all of you inside of my yearning body. You are the forbidden fruit that I cannot have, that I must have but once.
784 · Oct 2013
You are waiting for a train
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Loyalty truly is such a burden.
You fail to abandon things that hurt you,
stay with people who break you, fall for those
who care the least. Constantly, we are lost,
waiting on these train tracks for tragedy
we see coming, because we cannot bear
to leave such familiarity. We
do not fail to see the effects of our
actions; we instead fail to acknowledge
them. It’s not that we are blind to danger -
we choose to be deaf to these clear warnings.
780 · Aug 2014
Blue Jeans
Victoria Kiely Aug 2014
I have never been a fan of the way jeans hug too tightly. The fat on my body has always found a way to spill over the button or stretch the seams until they are near ripping. The way we have constructed things to hold in what we cannot or do not wish to see astounds me. Jeans are like the confinements of connection where one person connecting with another person is like two legs joined only briefly at the hemline. I am a truth too hard to swallow, the type that cannot wallow in confinement. I do not know bounds; I have never been good at colouring within the lines.  Where we know we can only hold so much before breaking, we constantly seem to be biting off more than we can chew and filling the jeans more tightly than we mean to. I am constantly spilling over the edge with anticipated words and phrases that are often too much of a burden. I am stuffing and stuffing and stuffing that leg full with promises I can only keep within the boundaries set by the fabric of your blue jeans.
718 · Oct 2013
Summertime Sadness
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
The congestion consumes the attention of a broken soul, unwilling and exposed. The sticky stillness brings a haze that silences the deafening sound of voices unheard by others. Infesting and manifesting every inch of your being arrives a hot intensity that stills you with an inner conflict.
711 · Oct 2013
Sandstone
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Sometimes we forget that people are a lot like sandstone;
with each encounter, they erode slowly until they have nothing left to give.
We take until only the thinnest, most unrecognizable forms of ourselves remain.
We become dust that sways with the winds that take us,
unable to discern what we really want anymore.
691 · Jan 2014
Lust Has No Remorse
Victoria Kiely Jan 2014
Love is never logical

and lust has no remorse

we follow instincts that

overrule what we know is

what we really need.

We often cannot say

how or why

because feelings are

so much harder to

say than to feel.

You can have this

ground-breaking love, or

an earth-shattering pain,

but all you can do really

is explain who made you

feel the way that you do,

never how or why.

Maybe love is not

supposed to be

this way, but it is

all I know.
682 · Oct 2013
Intent Listeners
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
the writer walks an inspired path as the oaks listen -
the cornfields observe from across the road.
The fields express their anxiety
of the strange people occupying them and the
mountains move
through their agony. He sits,
down on recycled oaths of leaves
and records the sounds of silent heartbeats
668 · Oct 2013
Lock Your Doors
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
People embody the term “enigma”
So eloquently and perfectly that
A change in atmosphere approaches as
They do. We forget that these people are
People; these people look like distorted
Projections of perfection. We forget
That inner turmoil troubles us all and
Can make up more of our total ‘self’ than
We wish it to. We forget that “people”
Aren’t really people - they’re monsters in wake.
They lurk and skill in the darkness, waiting
To be discovered, exterminated.
We are all monsters who forget sometimes,
The importance of simple kindness and,
It’s implications because we are too
Busy hiding. Hiding in cramped places,
And in the open, we act as shields from
Both others and ourselves. The problem with
A world full of monsters is that there are
So many of us that we have become
Anonymous - unrecognizable.
620 · Feb 2015
Aged Wine
Victoria Kiely Feb 2015
Forgotten wine glasses lay
Scattered on expensive furniture
The candle light flickers across his
Evergreen face.  His hand travels across
The plains of her scratched skin worn
Deep with years of regret and return
Of faded memories. But, his face transforms
Into another, his tongue translates
And tastes like age and experience.
Stronger now, these hands cup
Her, like a glass filling. Still, these hands convert
To the soft touch of a woman, caressing, but
Still callous. Each hand holds another,
Each hand held. Faces melt into
Looks of desire, and the bodies
Soften into one. Four bodies, one form
Separate lives, all worn
We became one.
*******
601 · Oct 2013
Love Yourself
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
There’s something about a woman who is able to appreciate herself without acknowledgement from another. The woman who continues to breath as a man catches his breath; can tell when enough is enough without being notified; who can do what she wants because she knows her happiness is independent from that of another, is always the woman worth having. Be this type of woman.
596 · Oct 2013
Transparent
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
What if all we saw when we looked at somebody was the way they looked when they’re turned inside out, innards exposed to the outer world. What if we did not see the shell of a person, but instead their essence. what could be achieved, what greatness could we foster if we skipped the extended moments of learning a new person beyond an appearance? who would we be if we were transparent?
587 · Oct 2013
Consumption
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
We habitually allow ourselves
To consume to our hearts content without
Remorse for others. Gluttony takes from
The needy and gives to those who do not
Need. The poison of greed snakes through our brains
And ignites shallow thoughts, calling to our
*****, and we reaping to it in actions
We call “commodities” instead of a
Luxury. Greed is the cancer of the
Mind, and we are all sick. Medication
Has no implications on this illness,
And there is little in ways of hope to
Find a cure to this madness we indulge.
Ravenous in our practices, we call
Ourselves the “superior race” in vain.
559 · Nov 2013
Mine, not Yours.
Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
Protests locked away deep in a safe, kept

hidden from prying eyes as I always

was. You kept me to yourself, let no one

see what was kept behind locked doors, condemned

to silence by your prying hands, touching

what was not yours to touch. Can’t you see that

I belonged to nobody? I never

belonged to you, do not think that I did.
This is about a bad relationship that I ended in March. Remember  that you belong to yourself and that you are of your own accord and devices. You belong to nobody.
545 · Aug 2014
Extrapolate
Victoria Kiely Aug 2014
Each and every day I have learned to extrapolate what I have learned from yesterday into a new tomorrow where I can do better by you, for you. I multiply my knowledge by yours and together we soar into this new and untraveled business of becoming something we don’t know how to name just yet, but we already agree is better. I take the effort I know how to give and give it twice, with more intensity and surety than ever before. I will always try harder for you.
540 · Oct 2013
Find Me
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Downtrodden paths that once were occupied/
Lay silent, untraveled. Familiar/
Pathways bring familiar memories/
Long forgotten, sweeping beneath cold feet./
Long moonswept hair lays still over a white/
Face. Tree roots like fingers combing through hair/
And caress her porcelain face waiting/
To be found, face down in the cold damp earth./
535 · Oct 2013
To Infinity and Beyond
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
We live our lives in waves that come and go with the wind. The rhythm of our hearts stuck on replay force us to carry on appearances of steady beating. Our circadian rhythms remind us of a world outside our own and of natural order in a less-than-natural time. Energy passes by and returns as tides once may have. And I know that everything we love has both it’s a time and rhythm, but what if there were no clocks? Sand drags through a shallow hole and nobody is there to watch; we are all far too busy loosing track of time. Time stretches to an unfathomable state and we are infinite again as we unite with what little unknown time we have left. Who would you unite with if you were infinite?
535 · Feb 2015
Tongue
Victoria Kiely Feb 2015
Nostalgia ate at my stomach like poison where it had already been tied into knots

I sat bare on my stripped floor; I nakedly stared into your eyes without inhibitions

And I insist on remembering you like that. I insist that I once knew you and that you

Once knew me and you knew that I needed you to go because I would never leave

And I refuse to believe that you did this because you did not love me.

You loved me in the way that you love your favourite book that is written in another tongue

You knew me but you couldn’t pretend to read my slurred words anymore.

I had transformed from the characters of your language to mine and its okay that you

Had to put me back on the shelf to let somebody else read the words you couldn’t.

I know that you still love my story, but my cracked spine won’t rest in your hands anymore

And I accept that. You knew it was time to let me go. I accept that.
529 · Oct 2013
Tainted
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Soft kisses melt in
The palm of my hand, warm lips
Tainted with new love
523 · Nov 2013
Watching the Horizon
Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
You cannot save a sunken ship; nor can you will the waves of the sea to be gentle to your vessel. But if I have learned one thing through watching myself become shipwrecked time and time again, it is that keeping a weather eye on the horizon does not keep you from facing and imminent fate. It only stops you from feeling a gently rolling tide and seeing the horizon for what it really is: radical, vast, and tragically beautiful.
Victoria Kiely Dec 2013
He walks in and I can already tell what type of man he is. He stops, looks at the chandelier that hangs above him. He looks like he just knocked back the whiskey sour I could bet a pretty dime he’s about to order. He taps the bar and says something.

    I take a good, hard look at this man. Honestly, he’s what most people would consider “good looking”: High cheekbones, taut eyebrows, eyes that saw right through every in here, refusing to look back.

    He scans the room and fixes his collar. His eyes stop and at first, I thought the he was seeing the woman behind me. He smiles slightly and begin to walk t me, his eyes never straying. He stops.

    “Can I buy you a drink?”
520 · Oct 2013
The Rise
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
They sip their drinks, laugh at eloquent
phrases. Every surrounding object gleams
with the novel approach of a recent
addition. These people take comfort in their “solidified”
position, but in these streets, something stirs.
The night awakens in interest and
the stars watch overhead. It started with
a promise of change. Bourgeois origins
fall and crumble at the feet of the old
proletariat. Those who have risen
succumb to their deepest fears an slip in  
to the dark abyss once separating
and mindful gaps are destroyed and expelled
as the people rise together as one.
Their hands raise into the air and extend
their grasps to uncharted places, unknown.
514 · Mar 2016
Untitled
Victoria Kiely Mar 2016
I remember thinking that you were so different from what I had imagined a man like you would be
I pictured a man who would tell me that I was lovely
Or smart
Or beautiful
Or anything at all
I thought that you would want to make me feel something more than wanting
I thought that you would want to make me feel anything at all

I felt that I needed to constantly give you
A space to crash into
To fall apart
To feel safe
To be yourself
For you to think that I was worth anything at all

You were cold to me most days
Warm when you wanted something, but otherwise
It felt as though there was a wall between us
I felt like you were always just about to say something
Then decided against it at the last minute
Like I wasn’t worth the thought

But I found that it was even just your silence that I craved
And I craved most what you couldn’t give to me

Fully and honestly
I wanted you to want to know me
Or even just to pretend to want to know me
And you never did – want to know me
513 · Oct 2013
Crossing Boarders
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Sometimes I wonder

How it would feel

To wake up each morning

To your smiling face

Looking back at mine

To spend 30 years straight

Looking at the same two eyes

Or how it would feel

To see your arm

Draped over my side

And watch as the backdrop

Changed from time to time

Behind your soft expression.

How would it feel

To travel the world

And have the only constant thing

Left in my life be

The way you looked each morning

When you whisper

"Good morning, I love you" ?

As seasons changed

And leaves became crisper

Time would stretch

While we both yawned

On those early mornings

Before the break of new dawn.

I wonder how it would feel

To spend an eternity with you.
511 · Oct 2013
Blood Bank
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
How strange it is to enter a place that is dedicated to taking from the present to provide for the future. Red patterns flow through thick red veins and are extracted through thin tubes. This precious pathway discerns the owner and rushes to the side of another, like a straying lover; pooling, seeping, oozing from fresh orphises. Where it is to go after it leaves me I do not know; what purpose it serves, I understand only vaguely. To spill a drop is to waste a divine gift. How odd it is to be able to give so little and fix so much. How often is one able to extrapolate potential in such a unique way.
499 · Jan 2016
Character description
Victoria Kiely Jan 2016
A man walked across the floor and stopped at the bar, pausing briefly to adjust his suit before speaking. It was hard to make out what he was saying over the loud music, but whatever he had said, it looked to have pleased the bartender. With her shoulders squared towards his frame, she flashed him her best smile. He leaned in closer and smiled back.
She began fixing a drink that looked rather complicated, but somehow it attested to his sophistication rather than his arrogance. The bartender finished the drink off with a maraschino cherry, which he promptly took between his lips, leaving only the stem out. He had a puzzled look on his face, as though he was trying to place the woman. He mumbled something else, and she laughed nervously in response.
At this, she exited the backside of the bar and walked towards him. He met her with his hand outstretched, and the two began to dance. They stood out from the other dancers at the bar because he was leading her in a traditional style of dance. She looked absolutely giddy.
10 minutes describing a character using no regular adjectives describing their physical appearance.
491 · Oct 2013
Imperfect Perfections
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Scuffs in walls have always interested me. They are both mundane and mysterious in their nature. Perhaps they were made during the process of moving, or while a careless mistake had been made by innocent children.
But perhaps
they were made through mischief and secrets. Perhaps they were made on purpose in an effort to leave a scratch on an already-ruined canvas. Perhaps it was not a mistake at all.
Scuffs on walls are quite similar to scars left on strangers skins; we know not the story behind them or their meaning, whether or not they were made with purpose. All we know is that they are present and that they could be simple or vastly interesting. We know they exist, and that is enough.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Nothing truly belongs to just one person. as we must all move on from these mortal constraints. We continually borrow things from an unknown provider - possessions, thoughts, time. Always taking from mysterious sources. We forget that all that we take must be replaced, in one currency or another.
Victoria Kiely Jan 2014
Some days I forget to love you

But I think those days are balanced out

Because there are days that I cant remember

What it was like to ever not know you

In all of your imperfect perfection

Some days I resent you, and you resent me

And we pull apart and ask ourselves

“Why do I love you at all?”

But we part and return once again

Like magnets made to repel each other

But still kept in the same place

Those days that I forget to love you

I repay a thousand to one.

You are magnificent and terrifying

And completely mine, as I am yours.

I am sorry for those days that I forget

That you are everything - the wind that blows

The trees that sing to me as I weep,

With each bent branch hanging overhead,

That you are made of a thousand stars

And the sun and the moon alike,

You are the change of the season

The cusp of the tide - You are everything.

And I promise to try to be less forgetful
479 · Oct 2013
In the beginning
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
An empty black canvas live quietly outside of existence,
Perfect and still.
Small ***** of light appear and fester dotting the vast expanse with it’s unorthodox paintbrush.
A startling action occurred and the universe became technicolor and intricate.
Spiraling into the attention of the canvas came a sphere, circling the sun as lover may, depending on one another.
Creatures inhibit a place like this and destroy what little “something” came of this black canvas of nothing,
and all the while the painter kept on creating new miseries.
473 · Oct 2013
She
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
She
She smoked like a chimney
Sunk as quickly as broken springs
Breathed like open windows and
Held like a home.
Her heart was a hallway of nomadic veins
Her hair golden honey
Her hands were driven paths beaten with age and
Her eyes were etched from wood
She spoke how a butterfly may land
How anchors may sink
How a petal may fall
but the thing is,
She always did seem to land, sink or fall.
464 · Oct 2013
Change
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Change arrives on the doorsteps of eager parents, spouting moments of potential. We wait patiently for the rebirth of new and old impacts on the many tomorrow’s to come. A scent drifts through a whisper of wind and carries us to a yesterday long forgotten. These memories remind us that nothing - good or bad - can stay with us for longer than a moment.
455 · Oct 2013
Young Dreamers
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Everybody, Everybody
Please come quickly. Assemble now to watch
as two become one, as two brace this world
with brave hearts and wild minds; here rests young love,
Both nomadic and questionable in
nature. They know not what lies ahead, but
together they will be the ones to say:
"It is I who has prospered, I who has
Loved unconditionally, undeterred
by solemn miseries”, or so they think.
You know so little, my dear children,
you don’t know any better. How could you?
But here we stand, hand in hand, all the same,
waiting so patiently to take thy name.
Why so hasty my dear, why love in vain?
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
I know we built these walls with many broken
promises, and that we meant for them to
be unstable and beautiful. I know
you want me to become something of small
reason or purpose, and I am meant to
be one of many. I know that. But I’m
not and neither are you and I want you
to know that. Stay a while. Don’t leave just yet;
For these broken-memory-bricks are sealed.
441 · Oct 2015
Rattle
Victoria Kiely Oct 2015
Say my name --
breath it like it is your last shallow, hollow breath --
rattling on your tongue like a snake --
Lost but still found, beautiful --
without plans but with purpose --
Treat it like the water you found in the desert --
like the sustenance you found when you were famished --
Treat me like you would die without me
440 · Oct 2013
Time Flies
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
The importance of a moment can escape us at times
Before you know it, the moment has passed.
A few minutes ago, you held her in your arms,
Just last month you took her to the place only you two know,
A year or more has passed since the first time you spoke the words “I love you”,
A decade ago you spent a day in her wake and knew only her name,
The length of the moment is unimportant.
The amount of time that has passed is irrelevant.
The important thing to realise is that the moment has passed…
433 · Oct 2013
So you're an artist now.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
It’s unfair that you were the artist.
You created a work of your own
out of my skin and
lived for it,
breathed for it,
died for it -
consumed
my raw flesh and became
part of something unnatural.
You bent the colours
to fit your needs
and painted my face
in white sheets
that you slept in
and I ruined your
perception of me.
You take me,
Bend me; Brake me
It’s all I’m meant to do
So tell me dear painter
Am I your favourite colour
Or have you gone onto
Something new?
432 · Oct 2013
Secret Garden
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
I’m imagining a place where trees stretch their arms to the sky and strain lucidly for stars we cannot reach. The grass reflects subtle lights spawned from fireflies landing in the palms of our hands, still, but alive. It smells of ethylene and the garden looks as though it could foster a plethora of unknown tales from unknown times.
But this place does not exist.
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