Skip to main content

When Your Hands Are Empty #poemofhope #faithpoetry #spokenwordpoetry

There will be a season when you have done all you know to do and still, nothing. No answer at the door. No sudden change. No sign in the sky telling you that tomorrow will be kinder. Just you, your unanswered prayer, and the strange silence that makes you question whether God is still listening. He is. Do not mistake silence for absence. Some of God's deepest work happens without making a sound. Roots grow in darkness. Healing happens beneath skin. Morning begins long before the window knows there is light. And somewhere beyond what you can see, your life is being moved by hands you cannot follow. So do not abandon your faith because you cannot trace God's footsteps. You were never promised a clear view. You were given enough light for the next step. Take it. Even if your knees shake. Even if your heart has questions your mouth is afraid to ask. Take it. Faith is not a life without uncertainty. It is waking up with uncertainty beside you and refusing to let it choose your direc...
Post a Comment

I Still Carry the Weight #sadpoetry #freeverse #emotionalwriting

I was not born into softness.
No gentle hands shaped my mornings,
no warm certainty wrapped around my nights.
I was raised in the quiet language of lack,
where empty plates spoke louder than voices,
and silence meant there was nothing left to give.

Childhood did not bloom for me.
It withered early,
like a flower denied the mercy of rain.
I learned to measure days
not by joy,
but by survival,
counting breaths between burdens,
counting hunger as if it were time itself.

There were nights
when the dark felt heavier than the sky,
pressing down on my chest
until even dreams refused to come.
And when sleep did find me,
it carried no peace,
only shadows stitched with fear,
echoes of a life already too tired to begin.

I grew older,
but nothing grew lighter.

Adulthood did not arrive as freedom,
it came as another chain,
forged from the same cold iron
that bound my youth.
The world told me to rise,
to become,
to build something from nothing,
but they never showed me how
to build with broken hands.

Poverty lives in me now
like an ancient root,
buried deep beneath bone and breath,
feeding on every fragile hope I plant.
I try to tear it out,
I dig with bleeding will,
with stubborn defiance,
but it clings,
it tightens,
it reminds me
that some things are not easily undone.

Each day, I step into the world
with quiet desperation stitched into my skin.
I search for work
as though I am searching for air,
knocking on doors that do not see me,
speaking words that fall
like dust in empty rooms.

I tell myself
to keep going.

Even when my legs ache
from walking paths that lead nowhere,
even when my voice grows thin
from asking,
from hoping,
from waiting.

I gather what little I have,
stretching it, bending it, breaking it,
trying to make it enough,
trying to make it last
just one more day.

But life…
life feels like a storm
that chose me as its center.

Unfair, relentless,
without reason or apology.

I watch others move forward,
their paths lit with chances I never knew,
while I remain here,
caught in a cycle that does not loosen,
a story that refuses to change its ending.

And there are moments,
quiet, dangerous moments,
when the weight becomes too much,
when the darkness whispers
that maybe this is all there is,
that maybe I was meant
to carry this forever.

But even then…

Even in the deepest hollow
where light should not exist,
something in me refuses to die.

A fragile flicker,
barely alive,
yet unyielding.

Hope.

Not bright,
not loud,
not certain,
but stubborn.

It does not promise salvation.
It does not erase the pain.
It only remains,
a quiet rebellion against despair.

It tells me
to take one more step,
to breathe one more breath,
to believe, however faintly, 
that something beyond this suffering
might still be waiting.

So I carry it.

Through hunger that gnaws like fire,
through nights that swallow my strength,
through days that offer nothing
but the same unbroken struggle,

I carry it.

Not because I am unafraid,
not because I am unbroken,
but because without it…

There would be nothing left of me.

© 2026 Gloria Penelope

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Not About You #poemaday #poetryaddict #poem

The mountain never bowed to applause, Nor did the river pause for tears. The sky has carried a thousand storms Without remembering a single face. You are a traveler, not the road. A heartbeat, not the clock. The world was already speaking Long before it learned your name. Some goodbyes bloom from seasons, Not from mistakes. Some distances are drawn by time, Not by the hands that reach across them. Don't make yourself the author Of every unfinished sentence. Some pages are left blank Because silence belongs there. There is a strange mercy In not standing at the center Of every ending, Of every change. The sun does not rise to prove a point. The stars do not dim to send a message. Life simply unfolds, Wild, indifferent, beautiful. So carry your kindness, Leave your footprints lightly, And when the world turns without asking, Smile. It's not about you. That's how it is. © 2026 Gloria Penelope
Post a Comment
Read more

Where Her Heartbeat Remains #sadpoetry #poetryaddict #poemofgrief

She was here, for a moment too small for the clocks to measure, too brief for the world to understand, yet long enough to leave fingerprints upon a mother's soul. A baby girl. A whispered promise wrapped in fragile dreams, carried beneath a hopeful heart that had already imagined a thousand tomorrows. Then came the silence. A silence so heavy it bent the walls inward. A silence that settled inside empty rooms, inside folded blankets, inside the spaces where laughter was meant to grow. The mother wept. Not the gentle tears that fall with ordinary sadness. These were ancient tears. The kind born from a wound too deep for language, too sacred for explanation. She cried for first steps that would never mark the floor. For tiny hands that would never reach for hers. For lullabies that would remain unsung, their melodies trapped forever inside her trembling chest. Night after night, she gathered her grief like broken glass. Each memory, each dream, each unanswered prayer cut her anew. Th...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Kind of Love That Stays #lovepoetry #poetrydaily #poetryaddict

I did not fall for you like people fall in movies. There was no thunder, no sudden music, no heaven opening its hands. You simply stayed a little longer than you should have. And somehow, that was enough. You learned the quiet parts of me, the places I keep locked, the old wounds I cover with ordinary conversation. You never asked me to explain the darkness. You sat beside it. That frightened me. Because I had spent so long believing love meant being saved, I did not know what to do with someone who could look at my brokenness and call it beautiful. Sometimes I wonder if we found each other too late. You carrying your ghosts, me carrying mine, two wounded souls pretending we were not recognizing each other. Our love was never soft. It had teeth. It lived in midnight conversations, in jealous silences, in the ache of almost losing one another. You could hurt me without raising your voice. I could break your heart with nothing more than the distance in my eyes. And still, when the night ...
Post a Comment
Read more