Shownotes
One Poem Only is a daily poetry podcast offering a quiet moment with a single poem—read aloud, without analysis or noise.
Life Is the Backside Of Embroidery by Aasfa Siddiqui
Aasfa Siddiqui
I’ve been thinking about it lately
life feels like the backside of embroidery.
All I see are the knots,
threads pulling in opposite directions,
lines crossing with no pattern,
like someone stitched it blindfolded.
But then
flip it.
Turn it over.
And there it is.
The picture you never thought was forming
flowers blooming where only knots existed,
Maybe that’s just my side of the cloth.
Maybe God sees the other.
The one I’m not allowed to touch yet.
The side where these very knots
hold the picture together.
Maybe heartbreak is just a red thread
meant to shape the outline of something larger.
Maybe loneliness is a dark patch
that gives contrast to all the light.
Maybe even the useless stitches,
the ones we regret,
add texture,
depth,
weight.
When the fabric is turned,
perhaps at the very end,
we’ll see it
every knot holding the shape,
every crooked line
part of the symmetry.
The mess will finally look like meaning,
and the backside will make sense
everything we called chaos
will glow with perfect order.
Faith
isn’t about seeing the image at all,
but walking through the confusion,
believing that nothing here is wasted.
That even the ugliest loops
are part of a beauty
I can’t see from this side.
And so
I stop trying to untangle everything.
I let the threads dangle where they want.
I trust that someone’s hands
gentler than mine
know what they’re weaving.
And if being lost in these tangle
still means I’m stitched into His design,
then let me remain here
knotted, confused,
but never outside the pattern.
So yes,
life is the backside of embroidery,
and God is the One who sees the picture.
We are just the threads
moving in loops,
crossing over one another,
wondering why it hurts,
never knowing we’ve been part of beauty
all along.
Until then,
we keep living in the knots,
trusting the Weaver.
Because life, as we know it,
is never the front side.
It’s the backside
More from Aasfa Siddiqui ↓
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