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 ...
Beneath white lights and whispered hours,
an elder rests on borrowed time,
veins tracing maps of many years,
a life now folded into a bed of steel.
Machines speak where strength no longer can,
soft beeps counting fragile breaths.
Doctors move with careful hands and eyes,
Doing all that knowledge still allows.
Hope stands quietly at the doorway,
afraid to step too close.
Charts say what hearts refuse to hear—
that survival is a fading word.
Children hold hands they once were held by,
their prayers trembling, unschooled in miracles.
Family gathers in sacred silence,
each tear a question heaven must answer.
“God,” they whisper into the night,
“heal what medicine cannot touch.
If not forever, then grant a little more—
a season, a year, one more sunrise.”
The room fills with faith and fear entwined,
where love kneels louder than despair,
and even as hope grows thin,
prayer refuses to let go.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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