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Love's Dark Reflection #lovepoetry #poetrydaily #poemaday

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 ...
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Where the Smile Was Meant to Be #sadpoetry #freeverse #poem

It wasn’t from my heart,
the laughter, I mean.
It rose on cue,
light as paper,
folded neatly at the edges
so no one would see the creases.

The smile too,
placed carefully
where a smile was meant to be,
like a painting hung
to cover a crack in the wall.

There are rooms
that require brightness,
tables that expect cheer,
streets that reward
the well-rehearsed grin.
So I wore it,
that curved disguise,
as naturally as a coat in winter.

No one asked
if it was warm enough inside.

That is how life is, isn’t it?
A daily theater,
with no rehearsal
and endless performances.
We learn the script early:
laugh here,
nod there,
say I’m fine
when the echo inside you
answers otherwise.

Not every smile is real.
Not every laugh is born
from joy.
Some are stitched together
from obligation and survival,
from the simple need
to move through the day
without explanation.

And still,
behind the practiced light,
a quieter truth breathes.
Soft. Unseen. Waiting.

Because even in pretence,
there is a pulse.
Even in the act
there is someone real
standing just behind the curtain,
hoping one day
the smile won’t have to be placed,
it will simply arrive.

That is life.


© 2026 Gloria Penelope

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