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 ...
They mistook her kindness for a lack of sense,
Called her foolish, bent her will,
Turned her service into offense,
And worked her spirit until it stood still.
They spoke over her, used her days,
Then erased her good with careless tongues,
Ungrateful words replaced her praise,
Each lie louder than the truth she’d sung.
Because she wore no fancy clothes,
No borrowed shine, no proud display,
They judged her worth by dress and strife
And laughed at the quiet way she stayed.
Her heart bled softly, unseen, unheard,
An inner pain she learned to hide,
She grew weak alone, yet in their world
She stood upright, unbroken inside.
All she asked of heaven’s ear
Was one small opening, one return,
A path back home, to roots held dear,
To the place her wounded soul still yearned.
And when that opening finally came,
She did not look back, she did not plead
She left with scars, but not with shame,
Returning to her roots… her truest creed.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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