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 heart was once a sanctuary
unguarded, luminous,
breathing belief as if it were air.
It trusted the warmth of voices,
never suspecting the blade hidden in kindness.
Hatred was sown low in the mire,
a quiet seed pressed into wounded ground.
No storm announced its arrival,
only the weight of betrayal,
only silence feeding its roots.
Deception burrowed inward,
layer upon layer,
until truth became a stranger
wandering halls it once ruled.
The lies learned patience,
learned how to live.
Darkness did not rush its becoming.
It rose like tender shoots after rain
green, convincing, almost beautiful
evil rehearsed gently
inside an unready soul.
That soul had been painted in light,
washed in faith, shaped by mercy.
But treacherous hands returned with acid,
erasing colors they once praised,
leaving scars where hope had lived.
This is the bitter craft of human nature:
how betrayal refines cruelty,
How innocence is taught to harden,
and how a heart, broken enough times,
is remade into something
It was never intended to become.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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