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 ...
Fear wears a crown and calls itself pride,
Standing tall on borrowed authority.
Its voice is loud, its heart is hollow,
A drum of dominance beating over silence.
Before you stands an educated wife,
A mind refined, a spirit awake,
Yet you bind her brilliance with invisible chains,
Turning partnership into quiet captivity.
You speak to her as though she were unthinking clay,
As though her eyes do not witness your cruelty,
As though her mind does not measure every lie
You dress in love and discipline as care.
You reprogram devotion into obedience,
Not from strength, but from terror,
The terror that she may rise beyond you,
That her light might expose the smallness you hide.
So you shrink her world to soothe your wounds,
Mistaking control for leadership,
Confusing fear with respect,
And dominance with worth.
Your insecurity learns the language of narcissism,
A mirror polished only for yourself,
Where her reflection is erased,
And only your fragile image remains.
Know this: pride built on fear will always rot.
Power born of intimidation starves the soul.
And no matter how tightly you script her silence,
Truth waits patiently,
Watching, remembering,
Unafraid.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
Comments