Mercy came knocking once, a pale wanderer draped in dawn, with weary eyes and gentle hands, carrying no sword, only the burden of understanding. But the wicked knew not her face. Their hearts were citadels of stone, where compassion died unnamed and every wound became a weapon. They barred the gates. For mercy is a stranger in the hearts of the wicked. She walks their halls unseen, a ghost among shadows, whispering of forgiveness to ears that worship vengeance. They drink from poisoned wells and call bitterness wisdom. They sharpen grief into blades and wear cruelty like a crown. Where mercy offers a bridge, they build a wall. Where mercy kneels, they strike. And so she leaves quietly, taking her light with her, while darkness settles deeper into chambers already cold. The wicked do not fear mercy, they fear what mercy reveals: that beneath their iron masks, beneath their kingdoms of pride, beneath the ruins they call strength, there lives a trembling truth they dare not face. For merc...
It begins in the unseen corners of me,
a fracture without sound,
a quiet distortion in the blood
that learns how to pretend it means something.
Unnecessary anger,
a candle burning in a sealed room,
Consuming the air it depends on,
calling it light
while everything slowly forgets how to breathe.
It arrives without invitation,
wearing the face of importance,
as if every small wound deserved a kingdom of fire,
as if every passing moment
owed it destruction in return.
And I listen to it,
that terrible voice inside the marrow,
hollow but convincing,
telling me that this heat is justice,
that this collapse is a necessary truth
instead of what it really is:
a trembling loss of control
disguised as a purpose.
Rage within,
not thunder, but something worse,
a slow ruin that never finishes falling,
a storm that forgot the sky it belongs to,
so it circles itself endlessly
inside the cage of my ribs.
It is exhausting in its persistence,
this sorrow turned aggressive,
this grief that learned how to bite
instead of weeping.
So annoying,
how it rewrites the world in shades of offense,
how it turns silence into accusation,
how it makes even peace feel suspicious,
like something hiding behind softness
waiting to betray me.
As if it is worth it,
as if breaking the fragile architecture of the self
over moments that will decay anyway
is some sacred proof of being alive,
as if pain multiplied is wisdom,
as if fire makes anything more true.
But life though,
Life does not kneel before this chaos.
It moves forward with indifferent breath,
carrying no memory of the wars I start inside myself,
no echo of the battles that never leave the body.
It does not pause.
It does not witness.
It does not answer.
And that is its cruelty,
or its mercy, I cannot tell anymore.
Because in that indifference,
my rage becomes small.
Almost embarrassing.
A private apocalypse
that the world refuses to acknowledge.
Still it comes back.
It always returns.
Like something already dead
refusing to understand it has no place here anymore.
But somewhere beneath it all,
beneath the collapse and noise and self-consuming heat,
there is a quieter thing,
not peace, not healing, not forgiveness,
just endurance,
sitting in the ruins of me,
waiting without hope,
but waiting still.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
Comments