Penny's World

Author: Penny

  • The Final Scene

    And CUT! 

    You’re gone now—vanished, exiled from my world.
    And I’m gone too—no longer naming myself as someone who ever belonged to yours.
    Yet somehow you linger, a burn mark I cannot scrub from my skin.

    You kissed my forehead as though you couldn’t see a world beyond me.
    You kissed my neck—playfully, I thought then—like my scent was the only thing that mattered in that neon-lit crowd.
    You held my hand as though letting it go would be letting life slip through your fingers.

    And still, after all that, you tell me you did not feel it too?
    Then lie—
    Lie if you must to keep your peace,
    Lie if you must to sleep at night,
    Lie if you must to forget.

    I unshackle you from my love.
    I unshackle you from every gift, every piece of myself I pressed into your palms.
    I unshackle you from me.

    I break the chain of my love.
    I take back what I gave, piece by piece,
    until your hands are empty again.

    I leave you nothing of me to hold,
    no trace to follow back.

    And so, my love, this is the final scene,
    the curtain call of my loving you.

  • Dear You

    This is the hundredth time I’ve promised myself—
    the hundredth time I’ve said this will be the last piece about you.
    And still, here I am,
    pen trembling, dragging your ghost into the margins of another night.
    How did it all crumble this fast?
    Why did you look like forever
    when you were always meant to be a moment?
    Why did you resemble love so closely
    when you were never supposed to be the love for me?
    I circle these questions like a prayer wheel,
    as if turning them over might summon an answer.
    But all I find is silence—
    the kind that bruises louder than words ever could.
    They say repetition dulls the ache,
    but each time I write you, it cuts deeper,
    like breaking the same bone again and again.
    Maybe I keep writing because I’m afraid—
    afraid that if I stop,
    you’ll vanish completely,
    and then what would all this hurt have been for?
    So this is the hundredth time,
    the thousandth time—
    me, trying to turn you into words
    when all you ever left me with
    was silence.

  • You Made This Place Unholy

    Love was once here. Love was once mine.

    From loving you to regretting you all the time—
    life’s been a circus, never a climb.
    So yeah, there’s no poetic way to sign off—
    just one clean line: fuck off.

    You’re gone, yet somehow you stay,
    haunting my house in your own decay.
    Your laughter rots in the cracks of the floor,
    your shadow still seeps beneath my door.

    The bed holds the weight of your filthy lies,
    the mirror still shows the ghost in my eyes.
    You left my walls soaked in mildew and shame,
    every silence whispers your venomous name.

    But hear me now—I spit you out,
    your haunting ends with this final shout.
    This curse you cast will circle back,
    cling to your chest, and paint you black.

    So when the night moans and shadows creep,
    remember—it’s your soul that’s mine to keep.
    My house will heal, my heart will rise,
    but you’ll rot forever in your own demise.

    I evict you from this heart. The door you slammed won’t open for you again. 

  • Goodbye, quietly…

    No, you never built the fire
    That could keep me warm like you said,
    But you sure as hell lit the flames
    That left Lover House burned, love dead.

    You painted daydreams in August,
    Only to let them slip through your hands,
    A cardigan left in the corner,
    While you chased castles made of sand.

    You swore forever like scripture,
    But your vows were smoke in the air.
    I was a mirrorball breaking—
    You barely noticed I was there.

    You were the archer, unsteady,
    And I was the mark you betrayed.
    Now folklore forests remind me
    How fairytales quietly fade.

    So when I hear our songs now,
    They sound like a cruel disguise—
    You promised me sparks and daylight,
    But all I got were ashes and lies.

    Let me know your thoughts

  • The Girl Before “The One”

    I heard the news—you’ve found your star,
    a guiding light, a heart to spar.
    In two years’ time, with vows begun,
    you’ll stand beside her, call her “the one.”

    And still I linger in the shade,
    the fleeting dream, the part love played.
    Not yours to keep, but yours to know,
    a fire that burned, then let you go.

    Like Taylor wrote in words undone,
    “I was the girl before the one.”
    The fragile bridge you crossed with care,
    to find a world beyond me there.

    I held your nights, your fragile fears,
    the weight of silence, uncried tears.
    I loved you raw, without pretense,
    and paid the price of innocence.

    It breaks, this heart, yet still it sings,
    of fleeting loves and broken wings.
    For though I’ll never wear your name,
    I’ll always be the spark, the flame.

    And when your story’s fully spun,
    you may remember where it’s from—
    the aching start, the songs begun…
    I was the girl before “the one.”

    Hey look, love was once here……you were once mine…all mine :”)

  • Paper Thin Forever

    I fell in love—
    slowly,
    then all at once.

    I let go of someone
    who loved me enough
    to move heaven and earth
    just to keep me from crying.

    Someone who held me,
    apologized with his eyes,
    and carried the weight of my hurt
    as if it were his own.

    But I let him go—
    for the hundred things he didn’t do,
    for the sweetness of your words
    that felt like promises.

    And so, I fell—
    slowly,
    then all at once.

    You became the echo in my days,
    the reflection I swore was mine.
    You felt like me
    in another body,
    the same soul
    wearing different skin.

    Life turned into a song,
    bright and careless—
    a Taylor Swift melody
    spun with hope.

    Naïve,
    I told you that on that taxi ride back home.

    I fell for you—
    and you left.
    Or maybe you were never here at all,
    only an illusion
    my love-starved heart
    painted into being.

    And maybe the blame is mine—
    for trusting words
    you never meant,
    for trading someone
    who made life feel easy
    for the echo of someone
    who was never real.

    Now I carry it with me—
    this fragile truth,
    this paper thin forever
    that scattered like ash
    when I tried to hold it.

  • Hoping My Way Out of You

    I hope I can finally fall in love with your absence.

    I hope I don’t love you anymore.

    I`hope it’s bright and sunny in your part of the city,

    and that you left the illusion of “us” long ago.

    I hope I can do the same. Someday. Soon.

    I hope your name no longer tightens my chest.

    I hope I stop looking for you in the corners of cafes

    and the shadows of places we once knew.

    I hope I stop writing you letters on the back pages of my diary —

    and lose the urge to tear out those love-soaked confessions.

    I hope I don’t crumble in the cereal aisle

    because the world still feels too full of you.

    I hope I find the strength to let you go.

    I hope I stop remembering the sound of your voice

    in the quiet hours before sleep.

    I hope I no longer dream of the version of you

    who might have stayed.

    I hope I forget the way your laughter

    once felt like sunlight breaking through rain.

    I hope we never stumble upon each other again—

    and hope love finds you, in all its wild glory,

    without me ever having to hear about it.

    And maybe, one day,

    I’ll hope for nothing at all.

    I believe this is what healing must look like- not forgetting, not replacing, not erasing, but reaching the place where hope no longer needs your name to exist.

    Let me know your thoughts

  • An Ode to Calcutta…

    You see, this city lives two lives—
    One that goes by the name of Calcutta, steeped in culture, nostalgia, and the slow unravel of time.
    And the other—Kolkata—the rebranded, fast-paced metro, defined by the chaos of traffic and the digital clock above the Esplanade crossing.

    But no matter how much it tries to keep up with its metropolitan siblings—Delhi’s sprawl, Bombay’s buzz, Bangalore’s tech sheen—this city still beats to a rhythm that is entirely its own. A rhythm of adda that stretches through the afternoon, of mishti in clay cups, of trams that dare to survive in a world of Ubers and impatient deadlines.

    It rained today in Calcutta. Not the kind of polite drizzle you forget, but a steady, monsoon rain that makes you feel like the whole world has paused to listen. And I found myself thinking of the kind of love that only this city can make you feel—the kind that is sentimental, slow-burning, and impossibly deep.

    There’s a reason why Calcutta romances hit different.

    Take Metro… In Dino, for example. A beautiful anthology of love stories that unfolds across India’s biggest cities, showing how romance is shaped by the pulse of the places we live in. From the clinical, high-functioning relationships of Delhi to the dreamy chaos of Mumbai, each story is distinctly shaped by its city. But it’s the Kolkata segment that lingers.

    Because in Calcutta, love isn’t found in coffee dates and Instagram captions—it is found in silences, in longing, in unspoken familiarity. The story set here doesn’t rush. It walks, like the city. It mourns and hopes at the same time, like the people. And it dares to ask the question: what if love didn’t need to be dramatic to be real?

    The city romances differently. It doesn’t just hold your hand; it holds your history. It doesn’t just remember your favourite song—it remembers the time you heard it for the first time on a crackly FM station while stuck in traffic near Shyambazar.

    Being born and brought up here, I know what it is to carry a city in your bones.
    To know that you’ll never truly belong anywhere else.
    And that no matter how far you go, you’ll always be looking for someone who loves the way Calcutta loves.

    That kind of love is not flashy. It is built over slow walks through College Street, over crispy phuchka shared between arguments, over Metro rides that are somehow too short and too long at the same time.
    It is built in bookstores and tea stalls, in the gap between what you say and what you mean.

    People say I’m stuck in the past. That I believe in a version of love that no longer exists. That I still romanticize letters, and Rabindrasangeet, and the poetry scribbled in margins of notebooks.

    And they’re right.
    Because Calcutta has taught me that love doesn’t have to be convenient to be true.

    I will love you like this city clings to ivy-covered buildings and yellow taxis—unapologetically, even if the world is moving on.
    I will love you like Kolkata loves Durga Pujo: with an all-consuming joy that doesn’t care about what comes after.
    I will love you with the quiet devotion of tramlines still carving their path through madness, and with the abandon of a sindoor khela afternoon.
    I will love both your chaos and your calm—just like this city does.

    Because this city has never tried to be anything it is not.
    It holds on—to its roots, to its language, to its impossible softness.

    And maybe that’s why the love born here lasts.

    In Metro… In Dino, every city told a different love story, but Kolkata’s story wasn’t about falling in love.
    It was about staying in love.
    Even when time passes. Even when people change. Even when love is no longer easy.

    It was about that one place, that one person, who still feels like home.

    And that, perhaps, is the truest tribute to Calcutta.
    That despite everything—
    the peeling paint, the crumbling houses, the crowded crossings—
    it still teaches you the kind of love that stays.

    So let the other cities race ahead. Let them find newer ways to romance.
    As for me—
    I will always choose to love the Calcutta way:
    with depth, with memory, and with no intention of forgetting.

  • Strength: The Weight That Breaks

    I have lived my life in half breaths for the past 13 years. A few long sighs here and there.

    You see, strength isn’t what they say it is. It’s not loud, not always noble. It doesn’t come with medals, or claps, or even a soft pat on the back. Sometimes, strength is just silence- the heavy kind that wraps around your throat and keeps you from screaming.

    When the world talks about strength, it’s always about survival. About pushing through. About resilience. But rarely do we talk about what it costs. We rarely speak of the quiet destruction that follows years of holding yourself together.

    I was 13 when I first learned what it meant to “be strong”. A phrase thrown like a life jacket in moments of grief, chaos, and confusion. I wore it like an armour, thinking it would save me. Instead, it began to suffocate me.

    The truth is, strength teaches you how to endure, but not how to rest. It teaches you how to carry pain, but not how to let it go. It tells you to smile when your world is burning, and clap for others while you bleed quietly behind closed doors.

    For 13 years, I perfected the art of “functioning.” I became someone who people admired for being composed. Who they praised for being mature, wise, “beyond my years.” But what they were really admiring was my ability to bury things. My strength was not healing — it was suppression.

    And that’s the thing no one tells you:Strength, when misused, destroys you.Not with a bang, but with a slow, gnawing erosion of your softness. You begin to unlearn tenderness. You flinch at vulnerability. You forget how to cry without feeling weak.

    You become so good at carrying pain that you forget how to set it down.

    We live in a world that glorifies grit. That idolizes those who keep pushing. But I’ve come to believe that strength, real strength, isn’t about how much you can take.It’s about knowing when to stop.It’s about asking for help.It’s about letting yourself fall apart so you can rebuild, not rot.

    Today, I am learning how to breathe again.Not half breaths. Not the quiet sighs of someone holding back tears.But deep, honest inhales that tell my body: you are safe now.

    If you’ve been strong for too long, I see you.But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to put that weight down.Not everything you carry is meant to be yours forever.
    Strength doesn’t have to destroy you.But it will, if you forget that you’re human first.

    Sometimes, I wonder who I would have become if I hadn’t been strong.Would I have laughed louder? Loved easier? Asked for more? Would I have been softer — not weaker, just unguarded — like rain that doesn’t apologise for falling?
    But strength hardened me. It taught me to anticipate disappointment, to lower expectations, to smile with gritted teeth. I became the dependable one, the emotionally mature one, the “rock” — and somewhere along the line, I stopped being seen as someone who also needed to be held.

    That’s the other cruelty of strength — once you wear it long enough, people forget you’re wearing it at all.You become invisible in your own pain.
    And when you finally crack — not break, just crack — it catches everyone off guard. They look at you with startled eyes, as if to say, “You too?”As if strength made you immune to feeling.As if survival was the same as living.
    But surviving is not a personality trait.It’s an alarm bell.A sign that something within you has been screaming for a long time, but no one — not even you — stopped to listen.

    So now, I’m trying something radical.I’m learning how to be gentle with myself.How to rest.How to grieve for the years I spent being strong instead of being free.How to forgive myself for all the versions of me that couldn’t ask for help.

    Because real strength isn’t about suffering in silence.It’s about choosing yourself, even when it feels selfish.It’s about learning to live in full breaths — not just the sighs between disasters.
    And if strength ever whispers again that I need to hold it all in, I’ll remind it:I am no longer a fortress. I am a field — open, wild, and growing.

    Let me know your thoughts

  • This Isn’t a Love Story — But It’s Still About Love

    It’s 2 a.m.—that hour when silence is anything but quiet, when the city’s neon pulse dims just enough for your own pulse to thunder in your ears. My apartment is dark save for the phone screen glowing against my face, and I’m teetering on the familiar ledge between exhaustion and restless curiosity. One more scroll, I promise myself. Then I’ll sleep.

    But instead, Instagram chooses that precise moment to place a reel in front of me—a scene from The Buccaneers. A girl‐on‐fire voice breaks through the hush:

    “Love is a heart attack. Love is the best and worst part of everything.
    Love is hating someone with every inch of your soul, yet spending even a minute without them is the worst pain you’ve ever known.”

    I replay it once, twice, a dozen times, until the words stop being dialogue and settle into my chest like confession. Something sharp and strangely tender turns over inside me.

    Because I’ve always known love exactly this way: a contradiction that walks into your life wearing the softest smile and carrying a lit match behind its back. Love is never just gentle. It’s collision, combustion—comfort kneeling beside chaos. It dismantles the careful armor you’ve spent years forging, peeling you open with a touch that feels like reverence one moment and like lightning the next. You look at this person, aware they could shatter you, and invite them closer anyway, breathing in the risk as if it were fresh air.

    That’s the maddening part: love is rarely peaceful if it’s the kind that truly changes you. It’s the heart attack you enter willingly, a fever that burns through all your neat expectations. Yes, there are forehead kisses and flowers, but there are also slammed doors that echo down empty hallways, unanswered midnight messages blinking like Morse code for I miss you and I hate that I do. There’s the held breath in the space between hope and heartbreak. And just when you can’t find the language for any of it, songs rush in—because music always seems to understand our contradictions before we do.

    Think of the anguish in Taylor Swift and Bon Iver’s “exile,” the resigned ache of watching someone drift away in slow motion. Or the sepia‑tinted redemption of Stephen Sanchez’s “Until I Found You,” a reminder that sometimes love does return, softer and wiser than before. Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” howls for the kiss that never lands, while Hozier’s “Cherry Wine” aches with the quiet harm that blooms inside certain embraces. Every track is a diary entry sung aloud, proof that love can be hymn and dirge in the same breath.

    Then there are the people we hate to love—the ones who know every tender spot beneath our bravado. They press those hidden bruises, sometimes by accident, sometimes because their own pain tells them to lash out. Yet we stay. We stay because their absence sounds louder than any argument, because the idea of a world without their laugh, their scent, their particular chaos feels like being locked outside your own home. Their flaws mirror our own, forcing us to stare at parts of ourselves we’d rather ignore. Love, in that mirror, becomes a brutal teacher: it reveals our worst corners while somehow illuminating our best.

    And what of the nights after the storm, when everything is too quiet and your phone is turned face‑down on the pillow? You rehearse angry speeches you’ll never send, scroll through old photos, skip songs you once shared—only to circle back and play them again because pretending indifference hurts more than honesty. This is the truth we rarely post about: hatred is often grief wearing steel‑toed boots, kicking at the door of a heart that still wants in.

    So maybe love is all of it—the 2 a.m. tears, the text drafted and deleted, the playlist on repeat, the promise you make to yourself to never feel this deeply again (and the certainty you will). Love is both wound and balm, curse and cure. It’s the snarl of “I never want to see you again” tangled up with the softness of “Text me when you get home.”

    We keep choosing it—again, again, again—because somewhere beneath the bruises and the bliss is the quiet knowledge that the things with power to break us also shine the brightest light on who we are. The most beautiful sunsets bleed into the sky only after the sun sets itself on fire. The finest porcelain rings when you tap it, precisely because it’s fragile.

    And love?

    Love is the most beautiful violence we will ever endure—an ache that proves, beyond all doubt, that our hearts are still beating.

    Let me know your thoughts