Lope's Thoughts

My heart has been bleeding for so long it has learned how to hide the stain. It dresses itself in ordinary smiles, laughs when laughter is expected, nods at conversations, and walks through crowded streets as if nothing inside is falling apart. No one notices. How could they? The wound is hidden beneath practiced replies, beneath "I'm okay," beneath the mask I wear so often it sometimes feels more real than my face. Inside, there are storms. Quiet storms. The kind that do not shatter windows but slowly shake the foundations. The kind that keep a person awake at night, replaying old hurts, counting regrets, and wondering how someone can feel so lonely while surrounded by people. Fear sits beside me like a shadow. Fear of being judged. Fear of being misunderstood. Fear of becoming a burden. Fear of speaking the truth and watching people look away. So I remain silent. A prisoner whose chains are invisible. The world sees a functioning person. A capable person. A smiling pers...

I'm slowly fading, not all at once, not enough for the world to notice, just quietly, like a shadow losing its shape at the edge of dusk. My heart grows weaker With each passing day, beating not with purpose but with persistence, as if it, too, is unsure why it continue? There was a time it knew how to feel fully, how to rise without fear, How to carry light without trembling beneath it. Now it stutters, hesitates, like it’s learning how to exist inside a body that has forgotten how to live. And my soul… My soul has wandered. It no longer asks for direction, no longer waits for permission. It drifts where it pleases, pulled by something unseen, something darker than I ever meant to follow. A path unfolds beneath me, cold and endless, lit not by hope but by the faint glow of everything I’ve lost. And still, I walk it. Not because I want to, But because I no longer know How to turn back. I am slowly fading. I feel it in the silence that grows louder, in the emptiness that stretches w...

Life descends upon me as if my name carries a hidden indictment, a sin whispered into the marrow of my being Before I learned how to stand. Each dawn arrives already sharpened, prepared to wound without explanation. There is a secret ache lodged within me, a quiet inhabitant of flesh and bone. It burrows deeper with each passing day, unbaptized by mercy, teaching my body the vocabulary of suffering one pulse at a time. I ask  why  until the word thins to breath. It rises toward Heaven, only to fall back upon my chest, unanswered, as though the sky has chosen silence as its final language. My prayers gather like unsent confessions, stacked at the altar of waiting. I kneel daily, voice frayed, wondering if God is listening Or if faith is simply learning How to endure being unheard. Still, I do not abandon the floor of prayer. Hope limps, but it remains. My soul stays open, not from strength, but from exhaustion that refuses to die. I ask now only for mercy not clarity. For heali...

Failure upon failure like waves that never learn mercy, each one rises higher than the last, crashing into what little I managed to build. Trials come as fire, not the kind that warms, but the kind that hunts, burning beginnings before they can breathe. Dreams turn to smoke, plans to blackened bones. Morning arrives without promise, Tomorrow is an empty word, Hope is a language I no longer speak. I wake only because sleep lets me go. Every finger points in my direction sharp, accusing, certain. They do not ask what I carried. They only measure what I dropped. In their eyes, I am the lesson, the warning, the mistake. I feel like a victim in my own life, trapped inside a story Others narrate with cruel confidence. Even my strength is questioned, Even my silence is judged. I searched the ruins for light, but found only echoes of who I was. Faith feels foolish here, Prayers fall like stones, unanswered. All hope seems lost, buried beneath ash and blame, beneath fires that never taught me h...

Beneath white lights and whispered hours, an elder rests on borrowed time, veins tracing maps of many years, a life now folded into a bed of steel. Machines speak where strength no longer can, soft beeps counting fragile breaths. Doctors move with careful hands and eyes, Doing all that knowledge still allows. Hope stands quietly at the doorway, afraid to step too close. Charts say what hearts refuse to hear— that survival is a fading word. Children hold hands they once were held by, their prayers trembling, unschooled in miracles. Family gathers in sacred silence, each tear a question heaven must answer. “God,” they whisper into the night, “heal what medicine cannot touch. If not forever, then grant a little more— a season, a year, one more sunrise.” The room fills with faith and fear entwined, where love kneels louder than despair, and even as hope grows thin, prayer refuses to let go. © 2026 Gloria Penelope