BEDROOM / VENGEANCE

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.