What the Objects Knew
written by: Qudsi Rizvi
On my table lie three things
that have outlived explanation:
a cracked mirror,
a rusted key,
a length of silk ribbon, frayed at the ends.
The mirror does not lie anymore.
It has forgotten the vanity of wholeness.
Faces come to it broken,
leave broken,
yet somehow truer—
an eye refusing obedience,
a mouth mid-confession.
It teaches me this:
clarity is not smoothness.
The key was once certain of its power.
It opened doors with a clean turn of the wrist,
heard rooms breathe at its command.
Now it stains the drawer with time,
fits nothing,
guards nothing.
Still, it remembers
that access is temporary
and possession a rumour we repeat
until metal learns otherwise.
The ribbon knows only the body.
It has touched hair,
a wrist,
the throat of a gift never given.
It has been loosened in impatience,
knotted in hope,
discarded without ceremony.
It understands that beauty survives
not by staying
but by consenting to be handled.
I did not choose them.
They arrived—
inheritance, neglect, accident.
Yet together they speak a single sentence
I resisted for years:
Nothing is meant to remain intact,
locked,
or untouched.
Truth is what endures after the breaking—
when reflection limps,
when doors refuse us,
when adornment slips free
and becomes only what it always was:
a brief tenderness
passing through the hands.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – Three Objects, One Truth
- What the Objects Knew - February 22, 2026
- Yellow Bones & Bottled Peace - February 7, 2024
- In The Relics of Silence - August 29, 2023
