Endgame in Exile

I. Age Eleven

Tehran. Burning summer.

A Guard’s cold fist

meets my face

for a question asked

in the wrong tone.

The mark stays.

The question remains.

II. Age Sixteen

Break time. Empty classroom.

We draw the board—

chalk squares,

quiet pieces.

The door slams open.

Someone told.

“Eat it.”

Chalk dust on my tongue.

Bitter.

They erase the board.

Winter enters the room.

III. Age Seventeen

Chemistry class.

He leans close—

“Look what I brought.”

Her face in his palm.

Boots in the hallway.

The door bursts wide.

Rifles. Hands in bags.

His eyes meet mine.

We tear fast—silent—

her smile into fragments,

swallow the evidence.

They pass.

That night

I taste ink and fear.

IV. Age Twenty-Two

University hall.

My classmate—

a player in Tehran’s Chess Federation.

My mother that morning:

“Be careful.”

I set the first piece down.

Before the second move,

Security’s hand

fell heavy on my shoulder.

The board scattered.

King, queen, pawns

rolling across the floor—

and for a moment

we all watched them go

as if none of us

knew how to stop

what had already begun.

V. Exile

Airports.

Fluorescent light.

The stamp falls—

once,

then again.

Each square erased.

The board I knew

stays behind

in chalk dust,

torn photographs,

a game folded

into the corners of my bag.

I carry the pieces

through every border—

but nowhere

to place them.

VI. Endgame

At each border

they open my bag,

turn over shirts,

books—

only empty spaces

where the pieces should be.

They never find

what I swallowed:

chalk dust,

ink,

the taste of fear.

A game

without a board.

Some nights

I dream in Persian.

The classroom returns.

The door flies open.

Pieces scatter

across the floor.

I wake—

reaching for a piece

that isn’t there.

Somewhere inside me

a pawn is still moving,

one square at a time,

toward a rank

it may never reach.