There is a place inside you No map has ever traced, a quiet room behind the ribs where light forgets to stay. No one sees it when you smile, No one hears it when you speak. It moves beneath your laughter like a river running deep. It is yours alone to carry, not carved for other hands, a language made of silence Only your soul understands. Some mornings it is heavier, a stone you cannot name, And still you rise and wear your life as if it were the same. But pain, it does not leave you when ignored or pushed away, it waits within the folds of time, it learns you day by day. It is not your enemy, though it cuts without a sound; it is the truth you buried but still lives underground. And yes, there are nights it breaks you, when endurance feels too wide, when even breath feels borrowed And there is nowhere left to hide. Yet somehow you continue, not because you do not fall, but because within the breaking You still answer life’s call. You learn to walk beside it, not beneath it, not above...
Life once fit easily in my hands,
light as laughter,
sweet as days that didn’t ask questions.
Existing was simple then—
friends came without effort,
joy didn’t need explaining.
Time moved gently.
I belonged without proving it.
I was known.
Then something shifted.
Quietly at first.
A job lost its grip on me,
and with it went structure,
purpose,
the small dignity of routine.
Life became heavier, unfamiliar.
Doors closed without noise,
messages stopped arriving,
chairs emptied around me.
People faded—
not with anger,
just absence.
Even family grew distant,
as if my struggle made me
harder to recognize.
Love thinned.
Silence grew bold.
Now I stand in rooms
echoing with who I used to be,
feeling like someone
new to the world,
someone without history.
I am alone
in a way that feels ancient,
as if I arrived here
without witnesses,
without roots.
Yet I remember—
how life once tasted sweet,
how ease once found me.
And maybe memory itself
is proof
that I was not always invisible,
that I have not always been alone.
I am still here,
holding what’s left of myself,
waiting—
not for the past to return,
but for life to learn my name again.
© 2025 Gloria Penelope
Comments