Lope's Thoughts

Why, but why don’t you feel her pain? Do you think she chose the tears, the sleepless nights, the quiet rain? Why, but why do you look away when her smile is only hiding what she cannot say? Do you think it’s easy to carry all that weight, to laugh as nothing happened while breaking at the gates? Why, but why when she whispers, “I’m fine,” do you believe the words and never read between the lines? She doesn’t need your pity. She doesn’t need your shame. She only wants somebody to understand her pain. She doesn’t need your judgment, she doesn’t need your hate, she doesn’t need your evil words adding to the weight. She doesn’t need your whispers, your cruelty, or your blame, she’s already fighting battles you will never know by name. Do you think it’s easy to be strong every day, to hold a heart together while watching it decay? Why, but why can’t you see her scars? Some wounds don’t bleed, some battles leave no marks. And maybe one day you’ll finally understand, that she wasn’t asking f...

 After the change, you will speak of her as though she were once a woman and then, without warning, the moon swallowed her name. You will say, “I knew her.” And people will believe you. Why wouldn't they? You have photographs. You have her handwriting sleeping inside old drawers. You have the sound of her laughter trapped somewhere behind your ribs. You have the scar where her goodbye forgot to become a wound. You will say, “She was once mine.” But you will not understand what “mine” means anymore. Because she will have changed into something language cannot hold. One morning her shadow will grow wings. Her reflection will stop copying her. She will look into a mirror and find an ocean staring back. And when she walks away, the ground will not remember where her feet touched it. You will watch her disappear through a door that was never there before. You will run toward it. There will be no door. Only a wall. Only your own hands bleeding against yesterday. After the change, she wil...

Some smiles are strange little planets floating where a face should be, with tiny moons orbiting their edges and oceans nobody can see. You look at them and think... sunlight. But sometimes there is an entire winter sleeping behind those teeth. Some smiles carry houses with no doors. Inside them, old memories sit at the kitchen table, drinking cups of silence that were never meant to be served. Some carry forests growing upside down inside the chest, their roots tangled around forgotten names, their branches reaching through the ribs toward a sky that does not exist. And some smiles, God, some smiles, carry oceans. Deep black oceans where yesterday's tears have turned into silver fish swimming around the wreckage of things that once mattered. Nobody sees them. Nobody sees the little ships sinking behind someone's eyes. Nobody hears the bells ringing underwater. Nobody knows that a person can walk through a crowded room while carrying an entire abandoned city inside their heart....

The dice is still rolling. I heard it last night inside the belly of the moon, knocking against its silver bones while something beneath the earth counted the numbers. One. Two. Three. I looked outside. The stars were gone. Not hidden. Gone. As if someone had reached into the sky and quietly stolen them. You stood beside your palace wearing the proud smile of someone who believed the universe had chosen him. “Look what I have built.” You pointed at the towers. You pointed at the gold. You pointed at the doors that opened whenever you approached. But behind you, the shadows were whispering. They knew something you did not. The river did not ask your permission before becoming a river. The sun did not read your name before entering the morning. And the wind has never stopped to ask who deserves to breathe. You simply woke one day with food on your table, a roof above your head, and enough light in your hands to believe you had created the sun. Grace is a strange creature. It enters quiet...

You thought of me until it hurt, or so the night tells me when it leans against my window with your voice in its teeth. You thought of me in the quiet hours, when the clocks forgot how to move and every shadow in your room wore my shape. You remembered my name like a wound remembers the knife. But you forgot how you pushed me away. Funny, isn't it? How memory becomes selective when the heart is trying to sleep peacefully beside its own cruelty. You remember my hands. The way they reached for you when the world became too cold. You remember my laughter, the little warmth I left behind in the corners of your life. You remember the way I looked at you as though you were something worth staying for. But you don't remember how you became ruthless. How your words slowly grew teeth. How every conversation became a hallway with no exit. How you learned exactly where I was soft and pressed there until I stopped bleeding where you could see it. You don't remember the doors you slamme...

There is a dead moon buried somewhere behind my eyes. I have been carrying it for years, a pale little corpse orbiting the ruins of my thoughts. Sometimes I hear it knocking. Not from outside, from somewhere deeper. As if there is a door inside my skull and something on the other side has been waiting for me to remember its name. But I have forgotten how to remember. My mind is an abandoned house at the edge of a city that no longer exists. The windows are open, but nothing enters. No birds. No wind. Not even the dust has the courage to stay. There are photographs hanging on the walls of people I have never been. In one, I am standing beside a black ocean, holding a lantern filled with dead stars. In another, I am smiling. I don't recognize that kind of cruelty. At night, the hallways rearrange themselves. The ceiling becomes the floor. The floor becomes a mouth. The stairs descend into places that have no depth. I walk downward for what feels like centuries and arrive at the same ...

He thought she was a fool. He saw the softness in her face and mistook it for weakness. Saw the kindness in her hands and imagined them already reaching for his needs. He spoke of love when what he really wanted was rescue. A woman to carry his burdens, pay his debts, quiet his failures, and call it partnership. He did not come looking for a woman to love. He came looking for a woman to use. And she knew. She heard the hunger beneath his sweet words. She noticed how his affection grew warmer whenever money was mentioned. How his promises became bigger when his pockets became emptier. How easily he said we when he meant you . But she did not expose him. She listened. She smiled. She let him believe he was the clever one. That was his mistake. He thought silence meant ignorance. He thought patience meant surrender. He thought her gentle heart had no eyes. But wisdom is sometimes quiet. It sits at the back of the room and watches everyone tell on themselves. And while he was counting what...

She was born with a gentle heart, the kind that still believed a wounded person could be healed by kindness. She gave without counting. Forgave without keeping records. Loved people who had forgotten how to love themselves. There was nothing dangerous about her, except her goodness. It made certain people uncomfortable. Her honesty stood too close to their lies. Her kindness made their cruelty visible. Her light found the dust they had carefully hidden beneath their rugs. So they sharpened a knife. Not always a blade you could see. Sometimes it was a rumor. Sometimes a betrayal whispered behind closed doors. Sometimes it was a hand that promised to help and quietly pushed her toward the edge. They placed small stones along her path and waited for her to fall. Then called her weak when she stumbled. They planted thorns where she once planted flowers. They poisoned friendships, twisted innocent words, turned her kindness into something they could use against her. And when she finally bec...

Before you call her difficult, wear her shoes. Not the shoes she wears now, not the polished ones, not the ones she learned to walk in after life had already taught her how to hide the limp. Wear the old ones. The ones worn thin by nights she never talks about. Step into the life she keeps behind her smile. Walk through the morning after a night of crying and pretend your eyes do not hurt. Get dressed. Fix your hair. Answer the phone with a voice that sounds normal. Tell everyone, “I’m okay,” while something inside you is quietly begging to be left alone. Wear her shoes when someone she loved becomes someone she fears. Walk the distance between I trust you and I should have known. Feel how heavy a heart becomes when it has carried forgiveness longer than it should have. You call her cold. You never saw how many times she reached for warmth and came back burned. You call her distant. You never heard the conversations she had with herself at three in the morning, trying to convince her h...

There are places where hatred does not scream. It smiles. It sits across the table, asks how you are, remembers your birthday, and says, I love you with a mouth that has already learned the shape of betrayal. We became very good at pretending. Good clothes. Good photographs. Good stories for people who never stayed long enough to see the cracks. We smiled beside each other while something poisonous quietly grew between us. No one noticed. Why would they? We looked happy. And happiness, these days, is often just a photograph taken at the right angle. You held my hand in public as though you were afraid the world might discover you hated me. I held yours because I was still hoping the person I loved was somewhere inside you. Perhaps that was my mistake. I mistook performance for devotion. You brought me flowers with one hand and planted betrayal with the other. You whispered promises while leaving little knives between the words. I did not see them at first. Love makes poor detectives of...

You. Yes, you. You wake up every morning carrying the weight of your own name like the world has been waiting for you to arrive. You think about yourself. Your pain. Your dreams. Your failures. Your victories. Your reflection staring back at you as if the mirror were an audience. You wonder, What do they think of me? Do they see me? Do they understand what I have been through? But listen. Nobody. Yes, nobody cares. The world is not standing still to study your scars. People are fighting their own wars behind their smiles. Carrying their own ghosts. Hiding their own fractures. You think your heartbreak is the loudest thunder in the sky. It isn't. Somebody else is crying behind a locked door. Somebody else is losing someone. Somebody else is wondering how they will survive tomorrow. And while you are busy asking whether the world notices you, the world keeps moving. The sun rises without asking your permission. The streets fill. The clocks continue. People fall in love. People break....