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 ...
Forgiveness won’t come easily
no,
It may never come at all.
I lived a life ruled by hardships
written in his handwriting,
laws designed for his comfort,
his benefit,
His escape.
I survived inside rules
that never protected me.
These scars were not accidents.
They were carved
by a careless heart,
by disrespect dressed as love,
by dishonesty that learned my face
and lied to it daily.
He fed me false truths
over and over,
as if my mind was empty,
as if I could not feel the weight
of being fooled, as if I was a child.
I was expected to forget.
To absolve.
To soften the damage
so he could sleep at night.
But forgiveness lives far from my heart
So far, it cannot hear my name.
It will not walk toward me,
not now,
not with time,
not with death.
Even my grave will not open for it.
This is not bitterness
This is memory standing its ground.
Forgiveness will not resurface.
Some wounds do not ask to be healed.
They ask to be remembered
So the truth is never rewritten.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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