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 ...
When a single mother raises her children,
The world pauses around her.
Dreams are folded neatly away,
sleep becomes a luxury,
and everything else learns to wait.
She works
not when it is easy,
but when it is necessary.
Under rain that soaks through courage,
under sun that burns exhaustion into her skin.
She works through nights
that do not promise rest,
through days that begin before hope wakes up.
Her hands carry more than labor
They carry lunchboxes, worries, prayers,
and the quiet fear of not being enough.
Still, she gives all of herself,
again and again,
without applause.
She becomes shelter.
She becomes strong.
She becomes the reason
small hearts believe in tomorrow.
When she is tired,
she keeps going.
When she is afraid,
she stands taller.
Because her children are watching,
and love does not allow her to stop.
The world may never slow for her,
but inside her home
Time bends
And everything she is
belongs to them.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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