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...
When they return,
do not mistake the echo for devotion.
It is not your soul they seek.
It is the harvest they once abandoned.
Their footsteps do not carry love;
They carry appetite.
Absence did not awaken tenderness in them.
It merely revealed how much they lost access to.
Do not romanticize the knock upon your door.
It is not long-bending in humility;
It is a desire retracing its map
to reclaim what once fed it.
If love had lived in them,
It would not have departed so easily.
Love does not loosen its grip
only to tighten it when it's convenient.
Understand this:
Their return is a strategy, not a confession.
It is ambition clothed as remorse,
hunger disguised as affection.
Close the door, not with anger,
but with clarity.
Seal it with self-respect.
Sweep the threshold of their shadows.
What once walked away
has already proven its loyalty to departure.
Clear the path.
Let the dust of manipulation settle into memory.
Make space where sincerity can breathe.
For one day,
a presence unburdened by agenda
will approach that same entrance,
not to extract,
not to consume,
but to dwell.
And when that knock arrives,
Your spirit will not tremble in confusion.
It will recognize peace
as something that does not leave
and return only when in need.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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