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...
Don’t be naΓ―ve.
Do not dress this ruin
in silks of misunderstanding.
There was no hidden tenderness here,
no buried cathedral of feelings,
waiting to be discovered.
I never cared.
Not in the way you deserved,
not with a pulse that quickened at your name,
not with a soul rearranged
by your presence.
I never loved you.
What you mistook for warmth
was rehearsal.
What you held as promise
was practice.
I was only passing through,
a traveller pausing at a lit window,
borrowing its glow
without intention of staying.
A practice was needed.
So was I.
I tried on affection
like a garment before a mirror,
tilted my head
to study how concern might look
if it belonged to me.
I learned the lines,
the softened voice,
the attentive silence,
the careful reach of my hand toward yours.
But the truth,
unyielding as winter,
remains:
I never cared.
Not when you spoke of forever.
Not when your eyes searched mine
for something deeper
than reflection.
There was nothing cruel in me,
only emptiness,
a hollow room
where echoes pretended to be music.
You were real.
I was rehearsing.
And though I stood beside you,
though I spoke the language of closeness,
my heart was elsewhere,
unclaimed,
untouched,
untethered.
Don’t be naΓ―ve.
Some people arrive
not as destiny,
not as love,
but as lesson,
passing through the fragile architecture
of another’s hope,
leaving behind the cold clarity
of what was never there.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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