The Last Seven Minutes

By Shireen Rashid

they say the mind replays itself when silence starts to bite,

a thousand scattered pieces stitched into a single seam,

faces i loved, the wars i lost, the ones i failed to fight,

echoes of every version of me that lived inside a dream.

the paper cuts of lessons, the bloodied hands of sums,

engines roaring louder than the doubts i never tamed,

the taste of words unsaid that burn against my gums,

a hunger for a moment that could never be named.

there’s a shadow in a corner, a smile i cannot claim,

a laugh that lingers like smoke, a look that never fades,

the love we never voiced still burns without a name,

and in its quiet, i feel every memory we made.

the laughter that abandoned me, the shadows that stayed near,

the prayers i whispered only to the ceiling of my room,

the victories no one counted, the losses i called dear,

the flowers i kept burying before they learned to bloom.

words i never said to you, the touch i never gave,

the story we almost lived but fate quietly rewrote,

the love that waits like an ocean, endless, silent, brave,

a phantom pulse that drifts with every thought i float.

would seven minutes hold me, or spill me out in shards?

would i drown in all the pages i was too afraid to show?

would i find myself in numbers, or in broken, brittle cards,

or in the face of someone fleeting i was never meant to know?

and when the reel runs empty, when the silence calls me home,

would i beg the void for mercy, or ask for just one more?

seven minutes is a coffin, but the past won’t leave me alone,

and i’ll scratch against its wood until my fingers turn to sore.

By Shireen Rashid