Three of the most tender sentences anyone can say sit at the top of this short poem, and the speaker can't let a single one land. Priscilla's "Belief" is about hearing love declared and being unable to take it in. What makes it ache is that the refusal doesn't sound cold. It sounds damaged.
The first word is "Your." It stands alone on its line, a possessive with nothing yet to possess, and the pause makes the speaker sound reluctant, holding something at arm's length. What follows is presented almost like evidence: "I love you." "I miss you." "I want to see you." The quotation marks matter. These are not words the speaker shares but *your* words, quoted rather than received. They also climb, from feeling (love) to absence (miss) to a wish for a future meeting (want to see). That last one is the nearest thing to a promise, which quietly prepares for the complaint that follows.
The reply is carefully phrased: "I don't think I can believe you." It isn't "I won't" but "I don't think I can." That is the grammar of someone who would like to believe and finds the ability gone, not someone who has coldly decided. The hedge makes the line more vulnerable, and more honest.
Then the poem looks outward. "Too many promises have been broken. / Too many lies have been told." The repeated opening makes the lines land like items on a charge sheet, yet both verbs are passive. Nobody is named as the one who broke or lied. That could mean "you," or others, or both, and the vagueness turns the hurt into something like weather, a climate rather than a single event. The next line widens further: "I lost all my trust and hope for people." It is the longest line, a long exhale, and it pairs two things that face opposite ways. Trust looks back at what people have done, and hope looks forward to what they might do. Losing both leaves nowhere to stand. The verb "lost" also suggests something taken or misplaced rather than thrown away.
Then comes the shortest line of all: "Even for you." The word "even" does the heavy lifting. It implies that "you" was meant to be the exception, the last person whose words would be doubted. The poem has expanded to include everyone, then snaps back to one person. The line can be read as accusation, as apology, or as a confession of sadness, and it is probably all three.
Priscilla uses no rhyme and no regular metre, only short lines that sound like speech. Yet five lines end on the word "you": the three quotations, the refusal, and the final line. Only the lines about broken promises, lies and "people" interrupt the chain. The effect is a kind of rhyme made from a single word, the other person's presence returning again and again while the wider world of betrayal sits between. The word also shifts meaning as it goes, from the person speaking, to the person doubted, to the person who was supposed to be exempt.
The title, "Belief", names a word the poem never uses. Only "believe" appears, once, so the title points at exactly what is missing. The text doesn't say who "you" is, whether partner, friend or family, though "I miss you" and "I want to see you" suggest distance. That blankness lets many readers slip into the poem.
Its insight is an uncomfortable one. Broken promises do their damage twice, once when they are broken and again later, when someone sincere speaks and cannot be believed. "Even for you" half-admits that the person addressed may be paying for other people's failures. The poem doesn't just say "I was hurt." It shows what being hurt costs, and who ends up paying.