Victoria Laboz

Straightjacket Love

Strapped in my straightjacket,
I was forced to love myself.
One bandage tried to patch
me whole again and heal the
animosities between my parts.
Exhaling my soul in small
doses, I sealed every cloud
in the terrariums of my airtight
prescription bottles and tried
to cultivate my suffocating
self. I had a dream that night
that I was swimming in a pool
brimming with cotton candy
colored pills, people were
sweating lithium and Prozac
and Zyprexa tablets. My
world was shaded in the same
ghastly transparent orange as
my prescription containers. 
The next night, I went to a
carnival from where my head
is still spinning on the merry-
go-round of monotone moods. 
I won the game where I had to
squirt cyanide into the clown’s
mouth until he died, and all I
got was a stupid pillbox to
repress my life in. Sleeping in
my mind-spun cocoon, I woke
up to find that my skin was
canvas. My belt tightened a
notch, forcing me to hug
myself harder, to hate myself
deeper. 

My favorite keepsake is not truly mine, but my father’s. It is a Skippy peanut butter jar that weighs at least five pounds filled to the brim with coins he collected from his travels around the world. When I was younger, I would stack these coins one on top of another and create towers that swayed and eventually clattered to the ground. AsI got older, I began to use it as a paperweight to pin down my papers from the spring breeze. It is not until my father passed away that I learned the true sentimental value of it.

Victoria Laboz was born and raised in Manhattan where you can find her jaywalking, reading on the train, and petting her chinchilla. Her favorite time to write is late at night when her thoughts are unrestrained and pour out onto the blank page. She likes to listen to the soft snores of her miniature schnauzer lying next to her and the clicking of her keyboard. Victoria is convinced that she was Wendy Darling in her past life, but she has yet to return to Neverland. She is currently working on building her own website.