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...
The mind was once an orchard, green and wide,
Where careful thoughts like summer apples grew.
But neglect crept in, with comfort at its side,
And sweetness spoiled where discipline once knew.
Ideas fell heavy, bruised before they landed,
Left in the dirt, ignored, unnamed, unseen.
Mold crowned the core of dreams once carefully planted,
Turning bright intention dull, bitter, and mean.
Days tangled like rooms never cleaned or aired,
Promises stacked like trash along the wall.
A messy life, with corners long unshared,
Where silence learned the echo of the fall.
Hands that should sort truth from waste and lie
You chose ease, you chose delay, later, and soon.
And so the orchard watched itself slowly die
Under a careless, unwatchful moon.
Then came the tears, salty and sincere,
Crying over fruit too rotten to save.
Grief for the self that once lived here,
Before bad habits dug their grave.
The pain was real, but so was the blame—
Rot does not bloom without neglect.
A ruined mind, a whispered name,
A mess built brick by brick, choice by choice, step by step.
Yet even rot feeds soil when buried deep;
From decay, new roots can rise.
If the keeper wakes from careless sleep
And dares to clean, to prune, to try.
© 2025 Gloria Penelope
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