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Love's Dark Reflection #lovepoetry #poetrydaily #poemaday

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 ...
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The old woman and her Jungle House. #shortstory

Deep in the jungle, where paths forget themselves and birds grow silent, stood her house. It leaned as if it were listening, its walls darkened by years of secrets. People said going there was a journey with no return—and those who laughed at the warning were never seen again.

The old lady lived alone. No family, no friends, no visitors she didn’t invite. Her smile was famous in nearby villages, but not for warmth. It was a tight, bloodless curve of the lips, stretched too carefully, as if it had been practiced in a mirror for decades. It never reached her eyes. Those eyes were always busy—measuring, planning, deciding.

She was mean in ways that didn’t shout. Her cruelty whispered.

Beneath the house was a basement carved into the earth, damp and airless. That was where people disappeared to. Travelers who needed rest. Relatives who trusted blood too much. Strangers who believed old age meant weakness. She locked them away and broke them slowly, not with chains alone, but with time. Years passed underground. People forgot their names. They became hands, backs, shadows—slaves to her quiet commands.

No one was special to her. Not cousins. Not nephews. Not those who shared her bloodline. Love had no meaning in that house. She needed no one, and that was the most dangerous thing about her. Loneliness did not frighten her—it empowered her.

Above ground, she moved calmly, tending her plants, cooking her meals, smiling at anyone unlucky enough to cross her path. Hypocrisy clung to her like perfume. Evil lived in her patience, in the way she waited for the right moment.

Those who thought they could leave learned too late: the jungle listened to her. The house obeyed her. And endings came suddenly—unexpectedly—like a door closing where a future once stood.

The old lady remained alone, just as she preferred. And the jungle kept her secrets well.


© 2026 Gloria Penelope

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