When your gaze found mine, the whole world swayed, As if the earth had missed a hidden beat; The sunlight suddenly grew unafraid, Then melted like warm gold around my feet. I tried to look away, but something stayed, A trembling little universe in you; My eyes became two doors I could not close, And every secret seemed to wander through. I felt my cheeks turn roses in the rain, A sudden fire underneath my skin; The stars began to whisper my sweet shame, While little suns kept blooming from within. Your eyes were not just eyes, they were a place, A strange blue room where gravity was gone; I wandered through the silence of your gaze And somehow lost the person I was on. My heartbeat stumbled, then forgot its name, It ran barefoot through corridors of light; I blushed as though the moon had called me beautiful, Then hid my face from heaven's watching sight. The trees leaned closer, jealous of the view, The flowers opened wider just to see; Even the wind became unusually shy, As thoug...
They wove a latticework of malice
In chambers thick with perfumed spite,
Where whispers curdled into verdicts
And envy masqueraded as right.
In clandestine communion, they drafted
The obituary of your ascent,
Architects of quiet ruin,
Surveyors of your firmament.
They named you dust.
They pressed you low beneath their heels,
As though your pulse was an inconvenience,
As though your breath required repeal.
They never glimpsed the ore within you,
The gold concealed in earthen guise;
They saw but soil upon your garments,
Not constellations in your eyes.
“Burden,” they murmured.
A syllable sharpened like winter steel.
Unmindful of the hand you offered,
Open, unarmored, real.
You were the improbable mercy,
The bridge flung over their abyss,
The lantern held in tempests
When no other dared such a risk.
And still they schemed to shear your radiance,
To confiscate your sovereign flame,
To cast you to pavements of derision,
An unnamed hunger without claim.
They longed to watch you wither.
A tattered psalm in a faithless street,
Palms upturned to indifferent heavens,
Dignity was shattered at their feet.
But destiny is not so perishable,
Nor light so easily undone.
The snare recoiled upon its makers;
The arrow curved, the circle spun.
For malice is a self-consuming fire,
A pyre built by its own hand.
And those who quarry another’s future
Unwittingly unroof their land.
You walked unscathed from their contrivance,
Your aura fierce, your spirit whole.
While life, impartial and unsparing,
Delivered harvest to their role.
Thus, you remain.
Not dust, not burden, not undone.
But a testament forged in shadow,
A brighter sovereignty is won.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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