NIKITA BYRNES | CREATIVES
I am a girl of the inner western suburbs.
Too posh for Blacktown
but too anxious and annoyed for Town Hall.
I could never walk through the shopping centre without shoes on
and materialism was bred into my
middle-class blood.
I grew up in public schools
– it’s my fucking terrible language that gives it away.
Step through the door of my nostalgia
(my bedroom)
and you will find I was
brought up by a television, a thousand books, and the internet.
Here, I collect postcards to remind me of the places I want to go
but probably never will.
Here, I keep a broken honey pot to remind me that the things I want
won’t always be useful in the future.
Here, I keep a hundred glow-in-the-dark stars
to remind me that I am almost nothing in comparison
to what lies beyond the clouds in our
daunting sky.
I hope, when the time comes to take them off,
they rip away the paint.
At nighttime,
my bedroom
(which is merely a room in a house)
screams recklessly in my ear
and I’m afraid the neighbours hear it
holding me back.
I won’t forget you.
But I wish you would.
The soft toys under my bed
scream for a better home
and oxygen
amidst the dust
but how could I let go of them when they
mean(t) the world to me –
once?
I’ve tried, so I can tell you,
that taking photographs
will never capture the life
I’ve lived in between these walls.
You would never believe the things they could whisper to you.