Autopsy of a promise
by Rudraa Joshi, India. First place in the Writory International Poetry Contest, November 2025, scored 97 out of 100.
Autopsy of a Promise I opened the promise with steady hands, Not to kill it, but to understand, Why silence trembled, unmanned, And how devotion turned to sand. The first cut sang of nostalgia's flame, Soft, pink, still whispering your name, It bled like guilt too proud to claim, A wound too tender to ever tame. Its ribs were made of almosts, frail, Each word a ghost, each vow a veil, Splintered truths in a lover's tale, Cracked beneath the weight of what could fail. The lungs still held your laughter's hymn, Mine tangled there, a requiem dim, Our breath, a prayer with edges grim, Faith gasping at the edge of limb. The heart was gone, it left mid-beat, Perhaps it fled the heat's deceit, Or turned to ash beneath defeat, A vanished god beneath my feet. The spine, a calendar of decay, Vertebrae lined in disarray, Each date collapsed beneath dismay, Time kneeling, but too proud to pray. And when I stitched it, flesh denied, The wound stayed open, sanctified, It wanted air, not to have died, A ghost reborn where vows had lied. So I laid it down where echoes sleep, Between our words, where shadows weep, A half-remembered oath to keep, Still breathing slow, a wound too deep.
Read all the winning poems with their scores, or enter the current round: every entry is read blind, scored out of 100 and receives a certificate.