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...
After the storm,
I found myself standing
among the ruins
of a life I once knew.
The skies had cleared,
but the damage remained.
Scattered across the ground
were broken pieces,
pieces of trust,
pieces of dreams,
pieces of people
who promised they would stay.
I knelt in silence.
Not because I was strong,
but because there was nothing left
to hold me upright.
The storm had taken much.
It stole familiar voices.
It carried away plans
I had carefully built.
It left empty chairs
where laughter once lived.
And painful goodbyes
echoed through the halls
of my memory.
Some departures
arrive without warning.
A final conversation.
A closed door.
A fading heartbeat.
A last glance
that becomes forever.
Loss has a way
of changing the shape
of a soul.
It carves valleys
where mountains once stood.
It teaches lessons
no one ever wishes to learn.
And yet,
there I was,
gathering the broken pieces.
One by one.
The piece called courage.
The piece called faith.
The piece called hope,
which had somehow survived
beneath the wreckage.
Some fragments cut my hands.
Others brought tears.
Each piece carried
a memory.
A wound.
A lesson.
A scar.
I wanted to leave them there.
To walk away
from everything that hurt.
But healing asks something difficult:
It asks us to rebuild
with the very pieces
that shattered us.
So I gathered them.
Not to become
who I once was,
but to become
someone new.
For storms do not return us
to our former selves.
They transform us.
And though the cracks remain,
they tell a story
of survival.
A story of someone
who stood in the aftermath
of loss,
crisis,
and heartbreaking farewells,
and chose,
with trembling hands,
to keep going.
To keep rebuilding.
To keep believing.
For sometimes
the most beautiful souls
are not the ones
that were never broken,
but the ones
who gathered their scattered pieces
after the storm
and learned how to shine
through the cracks.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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