Written piece
(Re)Spite
Shafqat Siddiqua
Bangladesh
About this piece
Using thread as a metaphor for a relationship unraveling through distance and infidelity, this poem explores a speaker’s internal monologue of nostalgia and growing resentment. It highlights their inability to sever the bond, and needing someone else to cut away the thread.
These are the thoughts I keep in my head
Between Shakespeare, and Brontë,
And the twangs of Radiohead;
I savor the taste of these words unsaid,
Never breathed into, but screamed
From my mind:
Undefined.
Aloud, I speak in traces, leave clues beneath
Cookie jars, kiss with crumbs on my
Lips
And miss. You. By a mile.
And an hour and a half of train rides,
And messy dorms. And the tang of eventual
Heartbreak.
After a summer of restless bliss and a
Monsoon soon to be spent
By the sea, under the moon, with sand
Beneath my feet and a head
Spinning with dreams.
And your smile. Filtered with dread.
Because this could be the end.
Goodbye.
Too late.
Regret.
A funeral for our pyre dated August
The 20th.
And yet, I keep these thoughts only inside my head.
In my bed.
Between our legs. And the sound of your
Soft snore that I’ll grow to hate.
In twilight, when I sit socializing in a city bar,
And you cheat on me instead.
With a blonde, a Sakura girl, then a brunet
Who doesn’t mind warming your bed,
And sending me pictures, anonymous,
Taunting me over the internet.
A guy, that’s who I had paid,
To look at our relationship,
And cut away at the thread.
(Why couldn’t I do it instead?)