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...
The master of pretence,
You called him your lover.
He moved through your heart
like a grandmaster over polished squares,
measuring silence,
calculating weakness,
seeing not you,
but position.
You were never a queen in his kingdom,
never the fierce diagonal of power.
You were a pawn,
advanced when useful,
sacrificed when convenient,
praised only when it served his endgame.
His smile was strategic.
His touch, a tactic.
Even his apologies
were rehearsed openings
designed to keep you in play.
And you,
you mistook the game for destiny.
You called manipulation a mystery,
called red flags roses,
called his absence depth.
Wake up from this velvet slumber.
The board was never sacred.
It was staged.
Cheating runs in his veins
like inherited instinct,
deception in his bloodstream,
betrayal of his pulse.
He does not stumble into lies;
He breathes them.
Real love does not exist
in his constructed world.
There, affection is currency,
loyalty is leverage,
and hearts are trophies
arranged on invisible shelves.
But you are not carved wood.
You are not confined to squares.
Step off the board.
Let him play alone
with his hollow victories,
crowning himself king
over a kingdom
made entirely of mirrors.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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