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 ...
There was a time
when I believed
every new face
arrived carrying forever.
I gave people
the best chair in my heart,
set the table with trust,
and welcomed them
without asking
how long they planned to stay.
Some stayed for a season.
Some stayed
until they found
a better road.
Others left
without closing the door behind them,
leaving memories
to wander the empty rooms.
So I stopped
calling people special.
Not because I became cold.
Not because I forgot
how to care.
But because I learned
that words are easy to collect,
while loyalty
is difficult to find.
Now everyone
enters my life
through the same gate.
No one wears a crown.
No one arrives
already important.
Time decides that.
Character decides that.
The quiet choices
people make
when no one is watching
decide that.
I have met strangers
who showed me kindness
without asking for anything.
I have known familiar faces
who disappeared
the moment life became difficult.
That is why
I no longer measure people
by promises,
titles,
or beautiful conversations.
I measure them
by their footsteps.
Do they walk beside me
when the road becomes rough?
Or do they vanish
when the sky loses its blue?
Nobody is special
simply because they appear.
Special is earned,
one honest moment at a time.
Until then,
everyone is simply a traveller,
crossing paths
with another traveller,
both hoping
to leave behind
more light than shadows.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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