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...
Who gave birth to inequality in life?
Was it time, or the hands that shaped it wrong?
Who whispered poverty into the cradle,
And called it fate when it learned to cry?
Who taught the world to measure worth
By weight of gold instead of weight of heart?
Who built tall walls and named them progress,
While shadows slept beneath the stairs?
Who gave birth to hunger with full granaries,
To cold nights beside burning lights?
Who crowned power and blindfolded justice,
Then, I asked the poor why they still knelt.
Who taught disrespect to look normal,
To laugh at torn shoes and tired hands?
Who made the struggle a spectacle,
And suffering a crime of birth?
Life becomes unbearable
When dignity is rationed,
When hope is taxed,
When survival is mistaken for laziness.
The poor did not give birth to their pain—
It was delivered by silence,
Raised by greed,
And educated by indifference.
Yet still, in cracked voices and calloused palms,
A question survives the weight of days:
If humans created this imbalance,
Can humans not unmake it, too?
© 2025 Gloria Penelope
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