Hymn Sung Backward

Look Down – Sophia Quezada

Benya Wilfret

The board, pristine—
a hymn of symmetry.
Light holds its place,
silence hums,
time’s breath shallow
in black and white.
The pieces sleep:
the knight, curved in defiance;
the queen, poised with restless power,
her reach tethered by geometry;
the king, fragile as glass,
yet bearing quiet gravity.
Each pawn, a seed
pressed into unseen geometry.
Then—
a hand lifts the smallest piece.
A pawn steps forward.
This first fracture:
a hymn sung backward.
Possibility folds,
the infinite wounded,
withdrawing like a petal.
Each move devours.
The knight leaps,
its arc rebellion,
yet bound by rules
it will never know.
The rook cleaves the grid—
certainty slicing
through the unyielding grid of space.
The queen sweeps horizons,
her reach straining,
aching to transcend.
And the king—
he endures,
as the board tilts,
the game collapsing
toward his inevitable undoing.
What is this world of squares,
this architecture of precision,
but a mirror of ourselves?
The board remakes us.
Each square, a wound on infinity,
each choice bleeding into beauty.
Checkmate does not end the game;
it ends the illusion.
The king sees himself—
fragility mirrored in every piece.
The board, a lattice of constraint,
through which freedom sings.
Each move narrows,
each step forward a closing door.
We walk the squares of our lives,
custodians of the narrowing.
And yet—
at the searing edge of the finite,
we glimpse the unbearable beauty
of what endures.
The infinite folds beneath our feet.