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 ...
In the middle of something,
not the beginning, not the end,
when the coffee cools
and the door is half-open
and you can’t remember
what you walked into the room to find,
there it is:
life,
unannounced,
sitting at the table
with tears in one hand
and laughter in the other.
They look alike from far away.
Both shine.
Both spill.
Both leave you breathless
and slightly embarrassed
at how much you feel.
In the middle of something,
an argument, a Tuesday,
a crowded train of almost-dreams,
you catch yourself smiling
while your eyes are still wet.
What strange weather
to carry inside a chest.
Did you ever think of it?
Happiness, I mean.
Not the loud kind
with fireworks and declarations,
but the quiet one
that sits beside the ache
and doesn’t try to move it.
Happiness at last,
not as a finish line
or a flag on a distant hill,
but as a soft chair
pulled up next to your unfinished self.
It does not ask you
to stop crying.
It does not demand applause.
It simply stays
while you are in the middle of something,
and whispers,
This too.
This is living.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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