*Flower Garden

I fell into a pit;
Too far down, too deep.
I found a flower garden inside,
unlike anything I'd ever seen under the sunlight.
So I decided to make it home,
for it made me feel like I belonged.
In it, I found the happiness I sought;
the idea of getting out abandoned my thought.

But now fear has crept into my mind,
slowly gripping me from behind,
injecting me with bitter nectar;
a stark and painful reminder
that no matter how much I think it as my home,
I'm afraid I have overstayed my welcome.
And is it just my eyes,
or some of the flowers I touched started to die?

"Maybe it's time to get out",
choir the butterflies out loud.*

Let me write of death until I master its name,
So when I am stripped of everything,
I won't be nothing.

© Victoria Damilola

Pain is all I have,
I have welcomed it
Carving the weight of choices that were not mine to make,
Waiting for it to overwhelm, to consume me whole—
A constant reminder of the debt
From decades steeped in guilt.
Pain is all I have, I am remade by its touch.

© Victoria Damilola

*Sometimes, it’s enough
to merely exist,
to sink into the silence,
to wear the weight of nothingness
like a second skin.

To drift through days
as a shadow among shadows,
unseen,
unchanged.*

*Silence is my shield,
my protector.

When I speak,
I am vulnerable,
exposed, misunderstood,
and judged.*#random

*How ironic that no matter how many times they broke her heart,

she still never ran out of the love she had in it.*#she#hope

Adulthood, they call it,
this slow unravelling
of innocence into something
more like survival.
The colours fade,
the music dulls,
and the world,
once so wild and wide,
narrows into roads
lined with expectations
and sacrifice.

Your breath in my arms still makes me blossom like a rose.

The smile you gave me once fuels my strength, enabling me to conquer the world.

Even if you will not be there in my final moments, I will find solace in the memory of your love, a love that once illuminated my life.

#Abdo #original