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When Your Hands Are Empty #poemofhope #faithpoetry #spokenwordpoetry

There will be a season when you have done all you know to do and still, nothing. No answer at the door. No sudden change. No sign in the sky telling you that tomorrow will be kinder. Just you, your unanswered prayer, and the strange silence that makes you question whether God is still listening. He is. Do not mistake silence for absence. Some of God's deepest work happens without making a sound. Roots grow in darkness. Healing happens beneath skin. Morning begins long before the window knows there is light. And somewhere beyond what you can see, your life is being moved by hands you cannot follow. So do not abandon your faith because you cannot trace God's footsteps. You were never promised a clear view. You were given enough light for the next step. Take it. Even if your knees shake. Even if your heart has questions your mouth is afraid to ask. Take it. Faith is not a life without uncertainty. It is waking up with uncertainty beside you and refusing to let it choose your direc...
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Young Village Wife #poem #sadpoetry #heartbreak

They named her their daughter-in-law.
before she learned her own name.
Marriage found her young,
not as a choice,
but as a destination already decided.

Her hands were trained
before her mind was asked.
Sweep. Cook. Obey.
Fetch water before sunrise,
carry firewood before thought.
This is the alphabet she was taught.

Village dust settled into her thoughts,
not because she lacked vision,
but because no one let her look past the hills.
Days repeat like commands—
live, work, sleep, repeat—
a body moving on borrowed instructions.

She lives under rules that never asked her consent.
Love is a duty.
Silence is respect.
Endurance is praised as strength.
She moves like a machine
that never learned it could choose its direction.

The city is a rumor.
Education, a foreign language.
Opportunity, a story told to other women,
in other words,
with better luck at birth.

And yet—
this is the cruelest part—
No one knows what she could have been.
No one tested her mind.
No one stretched her curiosity.
No one gave her light
or freedom,
or a book that asked questions instead of giving orders.

She might have been brilliant.
Strategic.
Inventive.
A voice meant for rooms beyond mud walls.
A talent large enough for the globe,
compressed into survival.

What a world she is living in-
not because she is small,
But because her world was made small for her.

And a good life, in a place she lives,
means learning how to live well under marriage rules, 

To live like a slave and disappear
without ever being called lost.


© 2026 Gloria Penelope

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