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 ...
There are two sides to every story,
Yet they choose the one who speaks the loudest,
Let them judge from a distance,
Let them think and assume what fits you best.
Their words carry no weight in your pockets,
Their judgments will never pay your bills,
They do not know the price you paid
To stand where you are, breathing today.
They never walked the miles in your shoes,
Never felt the heat of the fire within,
The quiet strength that kept you moving
Stopping would have been easier.
So let them talk in borrowed certainty,
You were busy becoming, surviving, rising,
Forged by pressure they could not endure,
Strength tempered where excuses burned away.
One day, your story will shine without permission,
Not explained, not defended, simply seen,
And those who judged from the shadows
Will witness the light they never understood.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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