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 ...
It was never easy,
not a path adorned with mercy,
nor softened by the kindness of fate.
It was a road carved in stone,
unyielding beneath trembling feet,
where each step demanded
a fragment of my strength.
Hardships did not arrive gently,
they came like relentless tides,
crashing against the fragile shores
of all I thought I was.
They spoke in storms,
in sleepless nights,
in burdens that settled
deep within the marrow of my being.
Life, once tender in its promise,
turned bitter upon my tongue,
a taste I could not escape,
sharp, lingering,
unforgiving in its presence.
Days unraveled into struggles,
stitched together with exhaustion,
while nights became long corridors
of wandering thoughts,
echoes of doubt
that refused to be quiet.
There were moments
I felt myself dissolving,
becoming less than whole,
less than certain,
as if existence itself
had forgotten my name.
I bent beneath the weight,
I faltered in silent corners,
I carried storms
No eyes could see.
And still,
something within me
refused to surrender.
A quiet defiance,
fragile yet unbroken,
whispered through the ruins:
continue.
Though the world grew heavy,
though hope seemed distant,
though every breath felt borrowed.
I remained.
Not untouched,
not unscarred,
but present,
a living testament
to endurance shaped in silence.
Survival is not always
a triumphant cry,
It is often a whisper,
a trembling persistence,
a soul choosing to stay
When leaving feels easier.
And so I speak it now,
not as a victory,
But as truth etched deep
into the fabric of my existence,
It was not easy.
Hardships found me.
Life grew bitter and unkind…
Yet through it all,
through every fracture and fall,
I endured.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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