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...
Poverty claimed my heart
without asking for permission.
It moved in quietly,
then stayed long enough
to feel permanent.
Now I cannot tell
What is good
And what is bad,
Everything feels the same,
flat, muted,
colorless.
Life wears only one shade to me,
and it is neither dark nor bright,
just endless grey.
Hunger no longer frightens me.
It is a language my body understands.
Sorrow no longer surprises me.
It sleeps beside me each night.
I have grown familiar
with empty cupboards
and heavy thoughts.
Poverty has become
my comfort zone.
Its rough edges no longer cut,
They shape me.
Its silence no longer echoes,
It settles.
This is the ground I stand on.
This is the air I breathe.
This is how I live,
between need and endurance,
between wanting and accepting,
between breaking
and somehow continuing.
And yet,
buried deep beneath the numbness,
There is something small
that refuses to die.
A quiet hope.
Not loud.
Not certain.
Just a whisper that maybe,
one day,
a miracle will find its way to me.
Maybe the grey will crack.
Maybe color will return.
Until then,
I survive.
And I wait.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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