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 heart was once a sanctuary
unguarded, luminous,
breathing belief as if it were air.
It trusted the warmth of voices,
never suspecting the blade hidden in kindness.
Hatred was sown low in the mire,
a quiet seed pressed into wounded ground.
No storm announced its arrival,
only the weight of betrayal,
only silence feeding its roots.
Deception burrowed inward,
layer upon layer,
until truth became a stranger
wandering halls it once ruled.
The lies learned patience,
learned how to live.
Darkness did not rush its becoming.
It rose like tender shoots after rain
green, convincing, almost beautiful
evil rehearsed gently
inside an unready soul.
That soul had been painted in light,
washed in faith, shaped by mercy.
But treacherous hands returned with acid,
erasing colors they once praised,
leaving scars where hope had lived.
This is the bitter craft of human nature:
how betrayal refines cruelty,
How innocence is taught to harden,
and how a heart, broken enough times,
is remade into something
It was never intended to become.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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