One mask, yet countless faces beneath its skin, each one learning how to begin again without ever truly starting. It smiles in borrowed sunlight, it bows in practiced grace, it learns the art of vanishing while standing in one place. A thousand eyes may pass it, a thousand hearts may guess, Yet none will see the fracture beneath its perfect dress. It speaks in many voices, each softer than the last, rewriting every present to survive what once was past. In morning light, it is gentle, by night it learns to hide, Becoming what is needed on whichever shifting tide. And still, within the silence, where no applause remains, The mask begins remembering the weight of unnamed pains. For every face it borrowed was never fully free, each one a fleeting version of what it feared to be. So it gathers all its fragments, all its selves in quiet trance, and wonders if it’s living or only learned to dance. Yet somewhere in the breaking, a truth begins to start: One mask cannot erase the multi...
She was not always like this,
not always distant,
not always cold in the eyes.
Once,
she loved like fire,
like something that believed
It would never burn out.
But fire,
when handled wrong,
leaves scars.
They broke her,
not all at once,
but piece by piece,
promise by promise,
until trust became
something she could no longer recognize.
No one stayed
long enough
to help her gather herself back.
So she stopped trying.
Now she doesn’t fall,
She calculates.
Doesn’t feel,
She plays.
Love, to her,
is no longer sacred.
It’s a game board,
And she knows every move.
She smiles like she means it,
speaks like she cares,
touches like she feels,
but it’s all strategy,
all distance dressed as closeness.
She learned from the best,
from the ones
Who broke her first?
Now she leaves before she’s left,
hurts before she’s hurt,
wins before she can lose.
A heartbreaker, they call her.
But no one asks
what it took
to turn her into one.
Because somewhere beneath it all,
buried deep wound,
a scar inside a broken heart,
where no one reaches,
Behind it all lies a girl
who once believed in love,
a girl who got played…
and never healed.
That's a girl who mastered the game,
to break men's hearts.
It's a revenge she vowed to keep.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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