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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.
*******
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
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Silence stills, time stops
Her limp body floats above
Deep water, leaves afloat
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
All I know is
I want your crawling skin
To cover mine and your
Lips to discover
Every inch
Of my willing body
In an attempt
To speak volumes
Without the use of words.
I want to kiss your mind
And sink my aching teeth
Into your thoughts
And learn you inside out,
Know you better than
You know your self.
I want to bite off a bigger piece
Than I am able to chew
And learn how to love
The secret parts of you.
To become two worlds,
Joint at the seams.
To create with one another
In mind, always.
This I know to be true.
Victoria Kiely Sep 2014
Do you cross my mind? Yes. Of course you do, but I have been far too focused on that fact. I have been trying too earnestly to push your small words, hints, and phrases into a different part of me that has faded in my rear view mirror when I should have focused on this fact instead: You no longer reside here. I don't let you live in my mind, or in the spaces I call home anymore. I haven't for a while now.

I can tell you that I miss you. I can tell you that I loved you. But I know in my heart that the only part of you that will stay with me now is the piece of you that walks with me down that dark path in my tail lights that are too quickly fading. We were fleeting perfection, this truth is indisputable.

But you don't get the privilege to call my head or heart home anymore. You gave that up when you decided that home was curled under her tongue, and god does that hurt to think about. You ran away from home, and I changed the locks.

You cross my mind frequently, frequently enough for me to write this, but never frequently enough to stay. You no longer have a place in my future. I thought I couldn't accept this fact, but it is better this way. For one can only conclude that love is not allowing a person to fill your walls with their company. Love is allowing someone to open the window, to fix the front door that hasn't opened for some time now. Love is building a home together.

So, you may visit whenever you like, God knows I have no control over that. But you are no longer allowed to consume more of my time, thoughts or energy than is necessary. I know that you simply aren't able to contribute to this home anymore - that's okay. I won't blame you for it. May you one day find shelter where I could not provide it.
Recently broke up with the man whom I had believed was what made home, "home".
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
The transition between seasons makes the trees look strange; like they are both missing something and bare something that they shouldn't simultaneously. The turn of the wind makes trees become barren while still wholly in bloom. the way the leaves look when they finally admit defeat and fall to autumns cruel wind is both beautiful and indescribable, and also entirely imminent.
Victoria Kiely Dec 2013
Its much easier
to leave when I know that you'll
arrive for return
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Electric currents run rampant
Through pulsing bodies
Connecting with one another
In ways we do not yet understand.
We care not to know the meaning
Of these waves, these
Gravitational pulls we feel
Between one another.
The only thing we care
To know is that
They exist at all.
There is no how, or why;
Things just are,
Because we allow them to be
Without gruelling questions.
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 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.
Victoria Kiely Jun 2014
Stirring in the streets of Manhattan walks a business man, bustling through a thick crowd on his way to work. He does not look up into the eyes of others who pass by. He doesn't pause or stop, nor skip a stride. He is anonymous.

Stirring in the sheet of a young mans bed is a woman, pulling the great duvet from between her naked legs. She does not bother to wake the make from his sleep, but pulls the covers past & under his feet. She leaves his apartment with the door still unlocked. He does not know her name. She, too, is anonymous.

Disturbed as he tries to sleep, beneath him a park bench creaks. The newspaper covering his arms in the cold November air ruffles. Some people pass, feet carefully shuffling as they pretend they cant hear his teeth chattering loud and clear. He draws the sports section close to his chest, trying to find long sought out rest. Anonymous.

Faces hidden by profession or prejudice, each one carried by mislead impressions. The person you see walking down the street or in his sheets, on the park benches beneath hail and sleet, both are and aren't what they seem.

The beauty in anonymity is that you can be who you want to be without witness, independent from your aesthetics and riches. For a time, you are somebody you are not. The stories that follow the stranger in the street are theirs to keep.

To you, they are only the business man of Manhattan, the woman in Satin, or the old man who sleeps on the bench in Rohatyn.

Anonymous.
quick poem pulled together today. haven't written in a while and ended up writing a spoken word poem. ?
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./
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Birthdays are quite morbid, counting the years we have graced suspended time with our presence. And as these years pass, you wonder how long you have left on this continuously ticking clock; how many more hours you have to slowly decay in the garden of life. Would it still be considered decaying if we stopped watching clocks? Would they tick at all?
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
You have become something like a stray piece
of forgotten furniture tucked away
from prying eyes, into the back of my
mind. Still very much there, still unaware
of both your and my own existence here.
Still you are attentive of my actions,
although I have long forgotten you watch
Patiently waiting to be seen, silent.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
I wanna scoop you up and pull you out
Of this dark and scary place
That I’ve been to too.
Too many times have my feet traveled the path you now walk
And too many things have happened
For me to walk alone again
But for you, I will venture
Through dark and troublesome times
For you I would cross a thousand labyrinths in hope of seeing
Just a glimpse of the face
I once knew like my own
And have forgotten once again
Victoria Kiely Jan 2014
Each time I am ripped from your grasp, I feel

as though I am being ripped away from

Life itself. My breathing quickens, and the

room spins each time my mind spins the outline

of your name. I constantly look for some

reminder of you to be close to you

even though i know that it will make me

feel the way I do now. I yearn for the

crisp kisses you gave me on the cold nights,

sodden with frost bitten lips, frozen. Is

this true love, or simply what cannot be?
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
You’ve gone to places I can’t imagine/
Places I’m not meant to follow, with no/
Intention of coming back. I knew that/
Night was the last and I’m sorry I was/
Broken into thousands of pieces/
When you left. And, I’m sorry I couldn’t/
Be what you wanted anymore. All I/
Know is that you’ve died while still living and/
The person I knew no longer exists./
Ambiguous death has taken place now./
However, it is also true that you/
Can always miss somebody more than you/
Might ever love them. If that’s true, I just/
Might die too, buried deep somewhere with “you”./
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
Victoria Kiely May 2014
Take me with you on that silent subway train, travelling in the dead of night.
Take me with you each time you take flight.

Take me with you to meet your mother,
Take me with you, read me cover-to-cover.

Leave no page of me unread,
Take me with you to your bed.

Take me with you.
Take me.
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 Oct 2013
If we were a house, you would be the door who lets me in, the floor boards that keep me steady, the couch that captures me in a deep embrace. You would be the roof overhead, arms stretching wide into protective beams running through panels above. You would protect me.

If we were a house, I would be the window that opens wide to stir the thick air, the stairs that bring you higher when you feel as though you must stop, the blanket that keeps the drafts from reaching you. I would take care of you.

If we were a house, you would hug me, and I would say “I’m home”.
I don't like this piece, so I am going to rewrite it in the future or revise it. I think it's still worth a share however, so I can reference back later.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
It is better to be alone in a room full of people than to be left to your own devices. It’s much harder to tell yourself you’re fine than it is to tell other people. The thing about crowds is that you have to put on this face to make people believe that you’ve made it through the war, clean of bloodstains and unharmed. You have to pretend that you are stronger than you look. You have to believe it.
But when you’re alone, and nobody is there for you to fool but yourself, it suddenly becomes a struggle to stay lucid in pretty thoughts. When everybody else gets tired of “you” and chooses to leave, you have nowhere else to go.
To find death is the only true escape from these corrosive thoughts we call home.
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 Jun 2014
How do you close your eyes once they have been opened?

How do you deny what you know

& turn a blind eye, refuse to see

what stares back at you blankly, believe real lies?




We know that we are doing wrong,

that we have done so for our own good.

Why are some things okay

so long as they go unseen, why

do we continue on happily,

as if we are unaware

of just how scared we should be?



Is it He, the man in crisp white collar,

who teaches us to fear

the monsters under our beds

but not those in our minds?

Is it he who makes us believe

that we cannot live but in this way at this time?



When will we wake from this dream,

this terrible nightmare that is reality?

When will we open our eyes,

are we truly so blind so as not to see

that this is something we willingly chose to believe?
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
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.
Victoria Kiely Apr 2014
I have a coat that I have kept for many years now, that I still wear each time the air becomes colder and the new season takes over. The left pocket rips into the seam. Inside I am able to play with the innards of the jacket while I play with the soft fabric using my left index finger.

I kept my favourite boots for two years, even after I had scuffed them and torn small holes in the toes. "Why do you keep them?" some would ask, and each time I shrugged and told them the same excuse that I had told myself just to hang on to them.

The shirt I am wearing today was bought many years ago, and I have since watched two buttons fall off on the lace back. It doesn't do up the way it used to; only one button remains. Still I kept it.

I suppose I have a tendency to love broken things, but this does not make me ashamed. The ripped coat pocket that separates at the lining allows more space in the pocket for other things. The boots had been broken in perfectly one winter and now fit my feet in a way I have not seen since. The shirt looks better without the buttons, almost as though they were never meant to be there at all. Some things are better left broken.
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.
Kin
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
Kin
If I should ever have a daughter I hope she sings and dances by moonlight and has a laughter that fills an entire room. I hope she breaths deeply in the mountain tops and writes her name in the stars with hopes of leaving behind a memory. Fields of green and skies of blue will welcome her with open arms and she will find herself in the early mornings. The eclipse will engulf her senses and she will see beautiful lights in the darkest of rooms. I hope she has her heart broken and finds herself again and again, loving her self and the life that she lives deeply. May she know the light but appreciate the presence of darkness. If I should ever have a daughter I hope she feels flooded with freedom and screams at the top of her lungs over open oceans.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
You kept the love alive
To **** it at the correct time
While I kept it alive
To see the butterflies
In the sky
With you by my side
Affection seeping into this kiss
Your mouth seeking my lips
For reasons unbeknownst to me
No
Victoria Kiely May 2014
No
You tell me that I shouldn’t be so insecure, but each time I reach my hand towards yours under the cool sheets, you tell me, in changing words and signals, “I do not want you”.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
The day your lover awakes
In the dead of night
With a doubt on their lips
Is the same day that
You lose them
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
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
We rely too heavily on people - sometimes they can become something like a drug that we wish we would not depend on, that we wish we were not addicted to
crawling underneath our silky skin, rolling in waves of pleasure first, then pain
And whats worst is that you can become addicted to certain types of pain - especially when the pain comes from something that once felt so, so right.
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.
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.
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
It is so pretentious to build things with the intention of sharing them with another,
to assume that we will find somebody at all.
Most everything is meant to be shared,
to be experienced in tandem;
to be seen with more eyes than you possess yourself;
felt with two hearts.
Sometimes, we are lucky enough to find but an extention of ourselves.
But that sinking, aching feeling when
that discovered extension of yourself cannot be found is unmatched,
only describable in the smallest of words - “missing you”.
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.
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