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...
Yesterday had a pulse.
You could put your ear
against the wall
and hear the house breathing.
The spoons knew everyone’s name.
The curtains moved
when nobody touched them.
Even the dust
seemed to have somewhere to be.
Today,
the walls have forgotten how to breathe.
They glow.
They listen.
They keep tiny blue moons
inside their sockets.
Yesterday entered the room
with muddy shoes
and sat beside you.
Today enters through a password.
Yesterday knew the shape
of a neighbor's cough,
the hour the bread came,
the sound of a gate opening
at dusk.
Today knows your location
to the nearest meter
and still cannot find you.
We have taught machines
where we are,
but forgotten
where we belong.
Yesterday
was not always beautiful.
It was heavy.
It had unpaid bills
folded inside drawers,
winter leaking beneath doors,
fathers coming home tired,
mothers counting coins
like little planets
that might disappear.
People fought.
People lied.
People left.
People stayed
when they should have gone.
But sorrow
had a face then.
You could sit beside it.
Today sorrow
has no chair.
It arrives as a notification
at 3:06 in the morning
and disappears
before you can touch it.
Yesterday
you waited for someone.
Today
you wait for their typing bubble.
Three small dots.
Three artificial heartbeats.
Sometimes they appear.
Sometimes they vanish.
And somehow
we have learned
to break our hearts
over punctuation.
Yesterday
a letter could take seven days
to cross a country.
Today
a thought can cross the planet
before you finish having it.
Yet yesterday
people seemed closer.
Today
the whole world
is inside our pockets,
and everyone
is somewhere else.
We carry oceans
in our hands
and die of thirst
at the dinner table.
Yesterday
the telephone rang
in one place.
Today
the telephone follows us
like a hungry animal.
Into the shower.
Into bed.
Into dreams.
It wakes before we do.
It knows when we are lonely.
It knows when we are awake.
It knows what we looked at
when nobody was watching.
Sometimes I wonder
if the machine sleeps.
Sometimes I think
it is dreaming us.
Yesterday
a photograph
could fade.
That was part of its beauty.
Faces softened.
Corners yellowed.
Time was allowed
to erase its fingerprints.
Today
nothing fades.
Everything survives.
Every face.
Every sentence.
Every foolish afternoon.
The past has become
a room with no exit.
We have built
a museum out of ourselves
and forgotten
how to leave.
Yesterday
people disappeared
into distance.
Today
they disappear
while remaining visible.
Their photographs remain.
Their accounts remain.
Their last message remains.
Their little green dot
sometimes remains.
But the person,
the person is gone.
Yesterday
absence was an empty chair.
Today
absence has a profile picture.
Yesterday
the sky was something
you looked up at.
Today
the sky is something
you scroll past.
Clouds became background.
Sunsets became content.
Rain became something
to post with a caption.
Even the moon
has learned
to perform for cameras.
But tonight
I saw a child
looking at it without a phone.
The child was not taking a picture.
The child was simply staring.
As if the moon
had spoken first.
I envied that child.
Not because childhood
was easier.
It wasn't.
But because wonder
had not yet become evidence.
Yesterday
you could say,
“I saw something beautiful,”
and nobody asked
for proof.
Today
we photograph the miracle
until the miracle
becomes ordinary.
We have confused
recording a life
with living one.
We have built
a thousand windows
and forgotten
to open a door.
Yesterday
had fewer choices.
Today
has too many.
Yesterday
you walked into a shop
and chose between five things.
Today
there are five thousand.
Five thousand songs.
Five thousand faces.
Five thousand ways
to waste an hour.
Five thousand people
you could become.
And still,
at night,
you are only yourself.
One body.
One room.
One heartbeat
trying to remember
why it came here.
Yesterday
time walked.
Today
time sprints.
Yesterday
an afternoon
could be empty.
Nothing happened.
And that nothing
was enough.
Today
every empty minute
is attacked.
We fill the silence
before silence
can tell us anything.
We reach for screens
the way drowning people
reach for air.
Perhaps that is why
we are exhausted.
Not because we do too much,
but because we never
truly disappear.
Yesterday
night was a place.
Today
night is only daytime
with the lights turned off.
The world continues
behind glass.
Someone is laughing
in Tokyo.
Someone is crying
in Nairobi.
Someone is getting married.
Someone is dying.
Someone is becoming famous.
Someone is eating breakfast.
Someone is breaking up.
Someone is selling a dream.
Someone is buying it.
All of it arrives
in the same small rectangle
you hold in your hand.
And you sit there,
motionless,
while the entire planet
passes through your eyes.
Yesterday
the world was enormous
because you couldn't reach it.
Today
the world is enormous
because you can.
And perhaps
that is the strangest cruelty,
we finally received
the ability
to speak to everyone,
and became afraid
of speaking to anyone.
Yesterday
people knocked.
Today
people type,
Are you free?
And if you don't answer quickly,
the question becomes:
Are you okay?
Then:
Did I do something?
Then silence.
A whole relationship
can now die
without anyone
raising their voice.
Yesterday
goodbye had a door.
Today
goodbye has a disappearing message.
And still,
somewhere,
an old radio is playing.
Someone is cutting oranges
at a wooden table.
Someone is writing
with a pen that leaks ink
onto their fingers.
Someone has forgotten
their phone at home.
They are walking.
They don't know
what time it is.
They don't care.
A bird lands
on a telephone wire.
The bird has no notifications.
No followers.
No archive.
No history.
It sings anyway.
And suddenly
yesterday and today
stand beside each other.
Yesterday smells of rain.
Today smells of electricity.
Yesterday carries a candle.
Today carries a screen.
Yesterday asks,
“Do you remember?”
Today asks,
“Did you save it?”
They look at each other.
Neither speaks.
Then yesterday
takes today's hand.
And beneath the skin,
there is the same heartbeat.
That is the secret
we keep missing.
We did not become
different creatures.
We only changed
the rooms around us.
The child who once
stared at the stars
is still somewhere
behind the adult
scrolling at midnight.
The person who waited
for a letter
is still waiting.
The person who believed
a stranger could knock
and change everything
is still listening
for footsteps.
Yesterday
did not disappear.
It went underground.
It lives beneath
the concrete of today.
Sometimes it rises
in strange places,
in the smell of rain
on hot pavement,
in a song you haven't heard
for twenty years,
in the sudden ache
of an old photograph,
in the sound
of someone.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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