There was a house inside my chest Where every window had been broken, Curtains hanging like tired prayers, Doors swollen shut from years of storms That no one noticed. The floors remembered every footstep Of grief that walked barefoot through me. Every goodbye stayed like dust On shelves I no longer touched. Even laughter sounded abandoned there. I became familiar with darkness. Not the kind that visits at night— The kind that moves into your bones, Unpacks its sorrow, And calls itself home. People said, “Time heals.” But time only watched me drown quietly While pretending I still knew how to swim. I smiled with exhausted eyes, Spoke in half-hearted breaths, Carried entire wars in my ribs While the world mistook silence For strength. Hope left slowly. Not like lightning. Like winter. One cold hour at a time. Until mornings felt meaningless, Mirrors became strangers, And my soul sat alone Like an orphan waiting for a name. Yet healing, Healing did not arrive beautifully. It did not come...
A whisper was all it was,
a passing thought, unpolished, unarmed,
released like a feather into open air,
weightless, harmless,
never meant to wound.
But ears are strange keepers of truth.
They bend sound into sharper shapes,
twist syllables into thorns,
until a murmur becomes a verdict,
and a breath becomes a blade.
What was once a simple critique,
a mirror held for a fleeting second,
was dragged through the corridors of pride,
stretched, distorted,
dressed in the heavy robes of accusation.
Voices gathered.
Not to understand,
But to echo,
louder, harsher,
until meaning drowned beneath noise.
And suddenly,
a name is no longer a name,
but a stain passed from tongue to tongue,
a shadow stitched from borrowed anger,
a story no longer yours to tell.
Words, once fragile and human,
now march like soldiers of spite,
armed with fragments of half-truths,
piercing deeper than any silence could.
How quickly a moment fractures,
How swiftly kindness is forgotten
When outrage tastes sweeter than reason.
And there you stand,
beneath the storm you never summoned,
watching your reflection shatter
in mirrors held by strangers.
All from a random act,
a flicker of thought,
a human imperfection,
reborn as slander,
echoing louder than truth ever could.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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