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...
Sour days line my pockets,
sharp as pennies I can’t spend.
Poverty sits on my back
like a stone that never learned
how to be lifted.
Distress comes daily,
served warm like a meal I didn’t ask for,
familiar in its bitterness,
routine as breathing,
hard to refuse.
Life whispers as if—
as if I could redraw the map,
as if I could choose a different clan,
a softer starting line,
a name not weighed down by history.
I imagine destiny as a door
that opens for others with ease,
while mine sticks in the frame,
splintered, stubborn,
testing my patience.
Still—
I am here.
Not victorious, not saved,
but standing.
Still breathing through the sourness,
still holding space where hope
might someday sit.
The weight hasn’t left,
the days haven’t sweetened,
but neither have I disappeared.
And for now,
that is enough to say
I remain.
© 2025 Gloria Penelope
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