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...
Is it fairness, or a twisted gift,
To walk this road alone, unclaimed?
To carry a name no one calls,
To grow in shadows where love should’ve stayed.
I ask the night, I ask the stars—
Was this written, or wrongly drawn?
To learn the world without a guide,
To wake each day already strong.
What if they lived?
What if their hands still knew my face?
Would life have spoken softer words,
Or slowed its unforgiving pace?
What if I rose in a different home,
Where laughter filled the air like song?
Where hunger was just a passing word,
Not a companion all along.
Maybe the scent of a sweeter life
Would’ve met me at morning’s door,
Not dust and doubt and empty plates,
Not wishing for a little more.
Unequal steps upon the same earth,
Some begin with crowns, some with chains.
Some inherit warmth and shelter,
Some inherit silence and pain.
Still, I breathe. Still, I stand.
Though love arrived too late to stay.
I carry dreams that never died,
Even when hope looked the other way.
If this is fate, let it be known—
I did not choose the cards I drew.
Yet in the absence of their arms,
I learned how to hold myself through.
Is it fair? I’ll never know.
Is it a gift? Time may decide.
But from the life that never was,
I built the one where I survive.
© 2025 Gloria Penelope
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