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Spirals

by Sasindie Subasinghe (Sri Lanka)

November 2021

Write the World Review

Audio: "Spirals," read by Sasindie Subasinghe

It began at the beginning in the middle of things;
at the center of the galaxy, in the middle
of a lollipop, at a mall parking lot: a spiral,
going up, coming down, round and round
around a silent axis, standing statue still,
where the world condensed before bursting out.

From a dot so minute, it grew out,
left bigger things for much smaller things,
curved the color of your eyes into helical strands; still
unsatisfied, searching for a nucleus, another middle,
another core, another axis, to wind ’round,
promise another straight line and draw another spiral.

It wrote itself in poems and stories in spiral
-bound notebooks of kisses and dreams and out
-of-place feelings and untamed curls tangled round
faces; growing up and not knowing things,
and bowls of spiral pasta in the middle
of the night when the city lights are still.

It bloomed flowers with divine proportion, still
nights giving way to rosy buds, blossoming golden-spiral
petals soft under the sun, whirling out from the middle;
then it dived into oceans and waters, mapping out
the path how the water drained the sink, left things
in hurricanes and whirlpools, spinning round and round.

It danced into sunsets, twirling in pirouettes round
the corner, where the snails with their curled shells still
made their way past the tendrils holding onto things;
and it frightened a million millipedes into a fearful spiral,
ran down the Loretto's twisting stairs and made out
with the yellow sunflowers, drawing circles in their middle.

It ate coffee swirls and swiss rolls for tea in the middle
of January, when the weather outside brought round
after round of harsh and bitter winds that left out
triangles for circles, left beelines for detours, still
swirling the brushstrokes of The Starry Night into spiral
clouds; even now, coiling another hundred things.

At last, it went out, with an artist, got lost in the middle
of life, felt things so roundly till the world spun ’round
a still thought and died in a poem, set in a spiral.




Sasindie Subasinghe is a 17-year-old writer from Colombo, Sri Lanka. She likes long car rides, sipping tea on rainy evenings, and gazing into the night sky. You can find her writing infused with lightning, stars, the sciences, and a quiet resolve to understand the ways of life.

#Nature       #Sestina

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Clare

5/26/23, 6:23 AM

Congratulations Claire - this is a powerful piece - this feeling of a yearning for a home that may not even exist anymore will be something that everyone who lives outside of their original homeland will resonate with. Well done.

Quin Tesa

5/25/23, 9:27 PM

Quin Tesa

5/25/23, 9:27 PM

Quin Tesa

5/25/23, 9:27 PM

Quin Tesa

5/25/23, 9:27 PM

Love the words I mean the way you coin the letters bravo! And also a fellow Nigerian as well good luck

Quin Tesa

5/25/23, 9:27 PM

Love the words I mean the way you coin the letters bravo! And also a fellow Nigerian as well good luck

Akinlose Emmanuel

5/24/23, 11:04 AM

An amazing piece, quite figurative and exciting to read.

Adin Underwood

5/6/23, 12:18 AM

It's staggering just how many topics this poem can apply to. Very eye opening. 10/10

Adin Underwood

5/6/23, 12:14 AM

Although it may seem simple on the surface it is quite charming to see just how much thought and effort was put into understanding how a cat acts and thinks.

Adin Underwood

5/6/23, 12:10 AM

I liked how even though each line was different it always came back to the central theme.

Sarah Parker

4/28/23, 3:01 PM

This was a wonderful piece to read. I can't imagine haven't been told about periods and sex. I was in fifth grade when I took a class. And even then, there were things they left out. This was a really important topic to write about. Great job!!

Sarah Parker

4/28/23, 3:01 PM

This was a wonderful piece to read. I can't imagine haven't been told about periods and sex. I was in fifth grade when I took a class. And even then, there were things they left out. This was a really important topic to write about. Great job!!

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