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 ...
The master of pretence,
You called him your lover.
He moved through your heart
like a grandmaster over polished squares,
measuring silence,
calculating weakness,
seeing not you,
but position.
You were never a queen in his kingdom,
never the fierce diagonal of power.
You were a pawn,
advanced when useful,
sacrificed when convenient,
praised only when it served his endgame.
His smile was strategic.
His touch, a tactic.
Even his apologies
were rehearsed openings
designed to keep you in play.
And you,
you mistook the game for destiny.
You called manipulation a mystery,
called red flags roses,
called his absence depth.
Wake up from this velvet slumber.
The board was never sacred.
It was staged.
Cheating runs in his veins
like inherited instinct,
deception in his bloodstream,
betrayal of his pulse.
He does not stumble into lies;
He breathes them.
Real love does not exist
in his constructed world.
There, affection is currency,
loyalty is leverage,
and hearts are trophies
arranged on invisible shelves.
But you are not carved wood.
You are not confined to squares.
Step off the board.
Let him play alone
with his hollow victories,
crowning himself king
over a kingdom
made entirely of mirrors.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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