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...
In the middle of something,
not the beginning, not the end,
when the coffee cools
and the door is half-open
and you can’t remember
what you walked into the room to find,
there it is:
life,
unannounced,
sitting at the table
with tears in one hand
and laughter in the other.
They look alike from far away.
Both shine.
Both spill.
Both leave you breathless
and slightly embarrassed
at how much you feel.
In the middle of something,
an argument, a Tuesday,
a crowded train of almost-dreams,
you catch yourself smiling
while your eyes are still wet.
What strange weather
to carry inside a chest.
Did you ever think of it?
Happiness, I mean.
Not the loud kind
with fireworks and declarations,
but the quiet one
that sits beside the ache
and doesn’t try to move it.
Happiness at last,
not as a finish line
or a flag on a distant hill,
but as a soft chair
pulled up next to your unfinished self.
It does not ask you
to stop crying.
It does not demand applause.
It simply stays
while you are in the middle of something,
and whispers,
This too.
This is living.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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