When your gaze found mine, the whole world swayed, As if the earth had missed a hidden beat; The sunlight suddenly grew unafraid, Then melted like warm gold around my feet. I tried to look away, but something stayed, A trembling little universe in you; My eyes became two doors I could not close, And every secret seemed to wander through. I felt my cheeks turn roses in the rain, A sudden fire underneath my skin; The stars began to whisper my sweet shame, While little suns kept blooming from within. Your eyes were not just eyes, they were a place, A strange blue room where gravity was gone; I wandered through the silence of your gaze And somehow lost the person I was on. My heartbeat stumbled, then forgot its name, It ran barefoot through corridors of light; I blushed as though the moon had called me beautiful, Then hid my face from heaven's watching sight. The trees leaned closer, jealous of the view, The flowers opened wider just to see; Even the wind became unusually shy, As thoug...
There is a version of me
I buried without a name,
no stone, no ceremony,
just silence pressed into the ground
with trembling hands.
No one saw the funeral.
It happened behind steady eyes,
between breaths, I pretended to be calm,
beneath a voice that said I’m fine
until it almost sounded true.
That version of me
cried in places no one visits,
in the pause before sleep,
in the echo after laughter,
in the spaces between words
I never dared to say aloud.
I wrapped them in quiet.
Folded their pain into smaller shapes,
tucked it neatly behind ribs
where it could ache politely,
where it wouldn’t disturb anyone.
They had a softer heart,
that one,
too open, too willing
to believe hands would stay
Once they learned the weight of holding.
They loved without armor.
Trusted without maps.
Broke without noise.
And when the cracks grew louder than I could bear,
I chose stillness over shattering.
I chose to bury them
before the world could finish the job.
But sometimes,
in the hush of an ordinary moment,
I feel them.
Not gone.
Just quiet.
A pulse beneath the surface,
a whisper through old wounds,
a ghost made not of absence
but of everything that once felt too much.
They are still there,
the one I buried softly,
holding all the tears I never let fall,
carrying the pieces I couldn’t keep.
And I wonder
If healing is not forgetting them,
not leaving them in the dark,
But learning to kneel
at the place I left them,
And I finally say:
You didn’t deserve to disappear.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
Comments