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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...
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I'm Still Breathing #sadpoetry #freeverse #darkpoetry

There is a strange kind of death
that does not require a coffin,
no cemetery,
no black clothes,
no grieving family gathered beneath a grey sky.

It happens in whispers.

It happens when people who once sat beside you
begin speaking your name
as though it belongs to someone monstrous,
someone unworthy of kindness,
someone they have already condemned.

I have watched it happen.

I have stood in rooms where conversations fell silent
the moment I entered,
felt eyes follow me like shadows,
heard fragments of stories
that wore my face but carried none of my truth.

The hatred within their hearts
was never loud enough to announce itself.
It arrived disguised as concern,
as curiosity,
as innocent conversation.

"Did you hear?"
"I was told..."
"They say..."

And with every sentence,
another piece of me was dragged into the street
for public display.

They spoke as if I had never given anything.
As if my hands had never lifted another soul
from their darkest hour.
As if my time,
my loyalty,
my sacrifices,
had all vanished without a trace.

As if every good thing I had ever done
had been erased by a story
someone invented in a moment of bitterness.

The cruel part was not the lies.

It was how eagerly they believed them.

People who never asked for my side.
People who never looked into my eyes.
People who accepted rumours
the way starving men accept bread.

And suddenly I was no longer human.

I became a warning.
A villain.
A cautionary tale.

The person they described
was a stranger to me.

Yet they repeated those stories
with such conviction
that even I began questioning my own reflection.

Perhaps that is what gossip truly is,

A slow execution.

Not of the body,
but of reputation,
of memory,
of dignity.

A murder committed without blood.

They spoke of me as though I were a murderer,
while becoming executioners themselves.

Their words sharpened into knives.
Their laughter became shovels.
And day by day,
they buried me beneath assumptions,
beneath accusations,
beneath hatred I never earned.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to gather every person who had judged me
and empty my heart before them,
show them every scar,
every sleepless night,
every battle I fought in silence.

I wanted them to know
how hard I tried.

How much I gave.

How deeply I cared.

But the dead are rarely allowed to defend themselves,
and they had already decided I belonged among the ghosts.

So I carried the weight alone.

I walked through days that felt endless,
through nights that seemed determined
to swallow every remaining piece of hope.

The loneliness was unbearable.

Not because strangers hated me,
but because some of the voices belonged to people
I once loved.

People whose happiness I celebrated.
People whose tears I helped wipe away.
People who knew my story
and chose to believe another.

That betrayal settled inside my chest
like winter.

Cold.
Persistent.
Merciless.

And still,
despite everything,
I remained.

Broken in places,
yes.

Tired beyond words.

But breathing.

Still breathing.

Because truth does not disappear
simply because lies become popular.

Because character is not destroyed
by the mouths that misunderstand it.

Because even when the world gathers
to hold a funeral for your name,
you are not obligated
to climb into the grave they dug for you.

So let them whisper.

Let them build kingdoms from rumours
and crowns from cruelty.

One day their voices will fade into silence.

One day the stories will lose their power.

And when all that remains
is the evidence of a life honestly lived,

the truth will stand where I stood,
scarred but unbroken,

while the echoes of their gossip
drift away like smoke
into the darkness that created them.


© 2026 Gloria Penelope

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