[Poetry] Plates

Read the winning entry for our week of June 22 contest, The Shape of Solitude

Plates
by Alweera Kaji

I used to name my plates and cups.

A cup for my sister, who likes her coffee borderline sugary.

The green plate with leaf motifs for my sunshine-energy friend, who came and stayed longer than I expected.

The red mug for the one I loved and hated at the same time, who never felt quite the same.

I never carved their names, but I knew precisely which plate, cup, mug belonged to whom.

Which cup carried my laughter. Which bowl had caught my tears.

Sometimes, I’d share a plate with my loved ones.

Two forks diving into the same meal,

talking, pausing, smiling at the same time.

Sometimes—no, many times—one of the plates cracks: a small fracture I don’t notice until I’m all alone again.

People leave, but the plates stay.

In those moments I want to break them,

but instead, I choose to wash them—every time—thinking:

You were here. You mattered.

You fed something in me.

But then comes my birthday—the rendezvous.

Brief. Beautiful. Bouquet of all the people I love—my safe places in the same space.

A lightning-flash of presence in my otherwise quiet life.

And after it ends, I don’t wash the plates immediately.

The plates—they sit, stacked gently in my sink,

still holding golden morsels of what we just shared—

bits of memory clinging to ceramic,

proof that it wasn’t a dream.

The silence that follows isn’t cruel. It’s holy.

But it is silence, nonetheless.

I didn't name the new plate this time. I can’t tell the older ones apart anymore.

I’m tired.

I already know how this ends. I’ve memorised the sink of solitude.

So I stand in front of it, half-ready to clean it all, half-willing to let it stay—leave.

And I wonder—

An empty sink will feel lonely... but isn’t a sink full of plates already full of emptiness?

About Alweera Kaji

Alweera is a teacher of physics. Reading is her hobby, and writing is her passion. She is currently learning French and trying to find magic in the mundane.

This piece was written in response to the prompt The Shape of Solitude.