You laugh at them. You point your finger and call them a fool. Their silence amuses you, their gentleness becomes your joke, and the crowd joins your laughter as if kindness were weakness. It feels enjoyable today, sweet on your tongue like careless victory. Their patience becomes your stage, their humility your entertainment. But time is a quiet witness. It watches without speaking, It writes its lessons slowly in the turning pages of life. A day will come When laughter turns into tears. The echoes of your mockery will return to your own ears like thunder across an empty sky. Situations will arise without warning, storms without hands to beat you Yet heavy enough to break your pride. Pain will arrive quietly, And you will feel the trembling of a heart that once laughed too loudly. And that fool, that funny person you once mocked, may stand in the distance, not laughing, but witnessing your tears, your shaking voice, Your falling ego. For life has a patient way of bending the tallest p...
They say they heard me giggling
as if joy had finally found my mouth,
as if the sound was real
that the storms had passed.
They didn’t hear any cracks within.
the way it trembled,
How it borrowed strength from agony.
I learnt to laugh the way one learns to lie
—carefully,
convincingly,
with just enough light to stop their questions.
After years of silence swallowing my name,
after being a guest
in the house that wore my family’s face,
The place I call my home.
Laughter became my disguise.
I laughed at the table.
where my words were never served.
I laughed in rooms
where my presence felt accidental,
like a chair placed wrong,
like a door that shouldn’t open.
I laughed.
It wasn't just my laughter
Agony, Isolation, trauma
of being called names
It wasn't a laughter
but a display.
© 2025 Gloria Penelope
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