“I have survived too much to go quietly. Let a meteor take me. Call the thunder for back up. My death will be grand. The land will crack, the sun will eat itself…
-the day I leave.” – Rupi Kuar.
Creating stardust with ink since 2005.
IG: @EchoesOf.Venus
My body is my home Where my mind is free to run rampant Dwelling vigorously, my eternal soul There are sturdy limbs that carry down to the halls of my fingertips Windows in the shape of eyes If you look inside, can you see the castle I have built? I had to learn how to love myself first before I could continue to give Constantly in renovation of new ways to take care so that I am never too empty, too unkempt too depleted, or dependent I will never be homeless
— Take care of your home.
Copyright 2019 Valerie Sanchez
If I wanted to I know how I can stop the whole world Separating myself out-of-body Just to become one with your every word My own bottomless ocean of feelings… feeling you entirely With such unfathomable intensity Caressing you without a single touch I can come to you vacant but still very much whole so I can offer you a place to get away And gentle reminders that keep you sane A forbidden territory for us deeply felt kind I find comfort in knowing that you are not alone And not letting you forget about your soul
It’s easy for one to hookup under the moon, But I want you in the morning and late afternoons. When the sun has finished stretching and maybe some coffee too. Breakfast on me, lunch on you?
Men have it all wrong. It is not the woman you should fear. It is the man who arrives after you— the one who teaches her that love was never supposed to feel like begging. The one who speaks gently where you were careless, who reaches for the pieces you convinced her were too much. Because one day she will stop mourning the love you never gave, and start grieving the time she wasted waiting for it. That is when you lose her. Not because she found someone better— but because someone finally showed her what better felt like.
No one tells you from young that being a woman is learning to carry things you were never meant to hold alone. The invisible weight of becoming, of softening without disappearing, of giving pieces of yourself, and hoping there is still enough left to call your own. You learn early that the world will study you— your body, your choices, your age, the way you love, the way you exist. It will ask you to be beautiful, but not intimidating. Strong, but not difficult. Kind, but never too much. And somehow, through all of this, you are still expected to bloom. But maybe that is the miracle— that after everything, after every hand that tried to shape you, after every voice that tried to define you, you still become. Not because the world allowed you to, but because there was always something inside you that refused to disappear. A woman is not only what she gives, what she carries, or what she survives. She is the quiet universe that exists even when no one is looking.
I keep counting birthdays as if they are answers. But time has never promised anyone another spring— only that it will keep blooming with or without us. All my life, I have been waiting with intention— choosing carefully, loving slowly, hoping that when I decide and my darling arrives, they will know safety I spent my whole childhood searching for. There is a child I have loved for years. The terrifying part is not that they do not exist— it is wondering if I will run out of time before they ever do. And the cruelest thing about that is not the hands on the clock that move. But that one day, you realize your dreams have started aging too.
Do not tell me that there is only certain way I can live my life.
I have spent enough years mistaking cages for homes, silence was peace, and survival for living. I refuse to inherit a life that is measured by someone else’s fear.
There is too much of this world waiting to be touched— too many skies I have yet to stand beneath, too many versions of myself still waiting to be met.
Do not ask me to make myself smaller So that you can understand me better I was not born to become a monument to other people’s expectations.
I want a life that leaves dirt beneath my fingernails, salt on my skin, stories in my bones, and wonder where certainty once lived. I want to love without counting the cost. To leave when my spirit begins to disappear. To begin again as many times as my soul asks me to.
If I only have this one chance to borrow this body, then let me spend it until it is no longer borrowed, let me wear it thin against the world, let me leave it full of weather, glitter and wonder.
When I am gone, do not call it tragedy that I died. Call it tragedy if I ever lived as though I were already buried. Let the ending be that I spent every borrowed breath becoming myself— not smaller, not silent, but alive.
Another chapter closed Without a shadow of a doubt Here we go- Again with my head turning round a few hundred-thousand degrees My desaturated eyes rolled back Another step closer to going crazy The blinding rage blanked me like a shadow, squeezing my heart and turning my fingers black
My chest pooled up with sorrow. It laughed at me, provoked me Mocked the benevolence in my soul It knew I’ve been screaming Sick from only being good enough for you when I had just finally become strong enough to let you go Although the grasp was tight around my neck I’ve always been a true force to reckon with
I promise, I didn’t want things to come to this.. But how did you ever think I could ever lose? To someone so selfish and weak I’d die before I lose myself to a man who can’t tell the difference between the normal human, and the sun or the moon..
Love has always been the constant moon that orbits my world, A gentle pull, never to depart. I’ve had so many chances to walk on solid ground but I rather be the other kind of girl In its gravitational embrace I spin and spin, A dance of souls where we may or may not win. Bound to the light, I drift and glide, Around your warmth, where true heart reside floating in time Yours and mine In this vast endless sky, we’re lost and found— Two stars forever in love’s orbit, inevitably unbound.
One of the most painful realizations in the world was coming to terms with how wrong I had been about what I truly meant to someone I deeply cared for Realizing that everything I thought I had with them was actually never real— Just a fabric of illusion I somehow created in my heart, and the denial was the only thing that kept me going. When did I convince myself that letting go of a false hope was worse than having the actual real thing? Or even believing I was really meant to have something more meaningful than this? I wanted to be right so much. I wanted to believe I had truly forged strong bonds despite the hand I had been dealt.
So, I tell you goodbye for the final time You go your way and I go mine We pack away all the wasted years I close my eyes and let you blow out the light
Utterly enamored You are my diamond, my beau Together we are much rarer, softer blissfully unashamed I’ve seen breathtaking worlds in many eyes But there hasn’t been any thing quite like you I have never really known “safe” Neither have I been truly secure in one’s arms To become one entity during the night and when the sun comes out from the dawn, we reign I see you through skin and bones I guess I forgot what it was like to be afraid You’ve challenged all of my defenses This is the most peace I’ve ever had in my life since you came.
I realized that I became apart of the problem when I allowed myself to believe there was nothing wrong when I was really hurting underneath from the lack of effort by your actions Somehow always left confused Waking up to thoughts of, “What if I’m not good enough for you..” How dare I- How did I ever let someone make me feel like that? The fact that I was always the only one always trying to reassure myself The rose colored glasses were too big but having self awareness to admit that it was all in my head was also problem on its own. I was always more than enough.
You swore you knew exactly who I was, but it was only a version of me that you created in your mind Tell me, was it out of fear? or disbelief in my character? Did the crease of my smile, or the resilience in my spine intimidate you? Perhaps I was nothing but a distraction instead of facing your own demons You never showed me who you really were until you only came around when you were feeling lonely I’m sorry I couldn’t live up to your expectations of all the things you thought I could be capable of From the beginning this was all your doing. I remember thinking if I should feel offended, since the real me wasn’t enough You just never wanted to open your eyes to see it for yourself I was never the one who had something to lose I don’t know how you can look at yourself in the mirror all the time and still be a fool The monster you’ve been looking for was not me
I’ve been working twice as hard all my life I was never given the luxury to have things handed to me I had to grow from my mistakes To take chances with low probability rates Tugging on life’s thin compassion Giving my own advice and running to nobody but myself in the middle of the night Maybe in the end it was all for the better but I didn’t know any of that back then That losing out on family, on love, on friends, would eventually lead to the hole in my chest being mended It’s strange how strength can be built from literally nothing oppose to those who I’ve met who have had everything My resilience can sometimes be even stronger As a child I used to wonder if I would amount to anything Everything I’ve done since then was to prove myself wrong
In Her Orbit 