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Love's Dark Reflection #lovepoetry #poetrydaily #poemaday

Love was never a heartbeat. It was the echo left behind after the heart forgot why it was still beating. It arrived wearing another person's face, its hands stitched together from promises that had already begun to rot. I welcomed it. Not because it was kind, but because loneliness knows how to mistake a wolf for warmth. Every smile it offered cast a longer shadow. Every whispered "forever" fed another ghost sleeping beneath my ribs. The thought of love is a clever liar. It builds cathedrals from broken mirrors, then asks us to kneel before our own reflections, calling the illusion destiny. How eagerly we obey. We water flowers that grow from graves, write poems to people who never truly existed, and embrace memories still unborn. Love watches. Silent. Patient. Like a spider waiting in the center of a web woven from hope. It never forces us inside. It simply lets us believe the silver threads are rays of morning light. By the time we understand, the sky has forgotten our ...

The Inheritance of What Never Was #poem #sadpoetry

Is it fairness, or a twisted gift,
To walk this road alone, unclaimed?
To carry a name no one calls,
To grow in shadows where love should’ve stayed.

I ask the night, I ask the stars—
Was this written, or wrongly drawn?
To learn the world without a guide,
To wake each day already strong.

What if they lived?
What if their hands still knew my face?
Would life have spoken softer words,
Or slowed its unforgiving pace?

What if I rose in a different home,
Where laughter filled the air like song?
Where hunger was just a passing word,
Not a companion all along.

Maybe the scent of a sweeter life
Would’ve met me at morning’s door,
Not dust and doubt and empty plates,
Not wishing for a little more.

Unequal steps upon the same earth,
Some begin with crowns, some with chains.
Some inherit warmth and shelter,
Some inherit silence and pain.

Still, I breathe. Still, I stand.
Though love arrived too late to stay.
I carry dreams that never died,
Even when hope looked the other way.

If this is fate, let it be known—
I did not choose the cards I drew.
Yet in the absence of their arms,
I learned how to hold myself through.

Is it fair? I’ll never know.
Is it a gift? Time may decide.
But from the life that never was,
I built the one where I survive.

© 2025 Gloria Penelope

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