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 ...
Break-ups do not shatter in a single sound,
they press down slowly,
a steady weight upon the chest,
as if the air itself has thickened
With everything we can no longer say.
Silence arrives first.
It stretches across the room,
pulls the curtains closed,
replaces the easy rhythm
of familiar voices and shared breath.
Where warmth once lingered,
stillness settles in its place.
The ordinary becomes unbearable,
empty chairs,
a phone that does not light up,
the absence of a name
once spoken without effort.
Loss grows loud in its quietness,
a constant awareness
that something sacred has slipped away.
Two hearts, once aligned,
Now beat alone.
Loneliness does not shout,
it hums beneath the skin,
a low reminder
of what love once sounded like.
Some words never found daylight:
Forgiveness withheld,
truths swallowed by pride,
“I’m sorry,” resting
on the edge of almost.
They linger between us,
unfinished sentences
with no ending.
And so we face the road ahead,
not together,
but side by side one final time,
before choosing separate paths.
Different directions,
different horizons,
carrying pieces of each otherWee cannot return.
The ache follows for a while,
walking quietly beside us.
Yet beneath the heaviness,
something softer begins to grow.
Peace,
slow, stubborn,
pressing its roots
into wounded ground.
It does not erase the past.
It does not silence the memory.
But it steadies the heart,
and whispers gently,
You can keep walking.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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