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 ...
Life broke open as thunder above my name,
skies splitting, truth roaring without mercy.
Each step I took was argued by the wind,
certainty torn into fragments mid-stride.
My mind walked in parallels
One version of me knelt in fear,
the other searched the dark for meaning.
They spoke in echoes,
and tears became the only language
both understood.
Misfortune poured without restraint,
a relentless baptism of loss and doubt.
It drowned my plans,
tested the architecture of my faith,
asked how much ruin a soul could house
and still remain.
I stood beneath the noise, undecided,
hands trembling, vision dim,
asking the heavens not for answers,
but for permission to endure.
Then the storm began to loosen its fists.
Not in mercy, but in timing.
Light seeped through the fractures,
and change arrived unnamed
a quiet strength learned
from standing too long in the rain.
In the aftermath, gratitude rose slowly.
Not for the breaking,
but for the breath that remained.
I lifted my eyes with a wounded reverence
and thanked God
for being the silence within the thunder,
for carrying me through the chaos,
and teaching my heart
How to listen once the sky grew still.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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