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 ...
She woke up each day beneath borrowed skies,
no wage, no voice, no space to breathe.
Her worth measured in his commands,
her silence enforced by threats dressed as "love".
Rules lived heavier than wedding rings,
abusive words echoing through thin walls.
She learned to shrink, to obey the storm,
to survive by becoming invisible.
Dreams folded themselves into corners,
waiting for mercy that never arrived.
Even kindness felt like a risk,
even hope learned to whisper.
One night, exhaustion spoke louder than fear.
Her heart packed what her hands could not
dignity, courage, a wounded strength
grown from years of restraint.
She did not argue.
She did not explain.
She walked past the door that caged her life,
leaving silence where control once lived.
No goodbye was owed to cruelty.
Freedom does not announce itself.
It simply leaves
and begins again.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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