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...
I am feeling cold,
yet no frost crowns the fields,
no winter wind bruises the air.
The sun stands indifferent above me,
and still my skin trembles
as though exiled into snow.
It is not the season.
It is the silence.
The air around me crackles
with unspoken verdicts,
with glances sharpened into quiet blades.
Goosebumps rise
not from weather,
but from the nearness of disdain.
I do not know,
am I wrong?
Am I the fracture in this fragile house?
Or merely the mirror
no one wishes to face?
Hatred hangs like invisible mist,
entering my lungs
without permission.
A helping soul—once open-palmed,
now stands unanswered.
My offered kindness
returns unopened,
as though compassion itself
were contraband.
Good deeds,
once planted with trembling hope,
have been uprooted,
their memory erased
as if they had never dared to bloom.
Blood became water.
Thinned.
Diluted.
Unrecognizable.
Those who share my name
look upon me
as though I have trespassed
against some sacred code.
Their eyes pronounce sentence
without trial.
As if I were a sinner.
And perhaps the cruellest cold
is this:
to be judged without crime,
to be exiled without departure,
to stand among your own
and feel foreign.
What a merciless world,
where warmth is rationed,
where love is conditional,
where truth is unwelcome
if it disturbs comfort.
Still,
beneath this trembling skin,
a pulse endures.
Not frozen.
Not extinguished.
For even in climates without winter,
even in hearts that turn to stone,
I remain_
breathing,
aching,
alive.
And that, perhaps,
is my quiet defiance
against the cold.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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