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 ...
Born into silence, not lullabies,
raised by nights that never asked his name.
His parents left too early,
carried away by untimely death,
leaving him with memories
He was too young to hold.
He sleeps where walls are borrowed,
a shelter that leaks when the sky cries.
Heavy rains drum lessons on tin roofs,
Thunder teaches him fear and courage
in the same breath.
He learned life from the wild,
how to listen, how to survive,
how hunger sharpens the senses,
And silence becomes a friend.
School gates were stories told by others
places his feet never reached.
Relatives with full tables turned away,
Their doors were locked by greedy hearts.
Blood meant little compared to comfort,
and love was measured in excuses.
Still, he stands weathered, unbroken,
stitched together by endurance.
A child shaped by storms and nights,
learning to live without mercy,
yet carrying a quiet strength
No shelter could ever contain.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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