2025 Epistolary Challenge FIRST PLACE WINNER: “To My Mother’s Former Fiancee” By Shradha Singh
Frontier Poetry is excited to congratulate the Frontier Editorial team’s pick for the FIRST PLACE winner of the 2025 Epistolary Challenge: “To My Mother’s Former Fiancee“ by Shradha Singh
What opens as a speculative letter to an unnamed man—To My Mother’s Former Fiancée—gradually widens into an excavation of absence and aftermath. This poem assembles a life from crumbs: half-regretted remarks, hidden photographs, a courtroom outburst, a last love letter read aloud years too late. Moving between medical lore and family mythology, the speaker traces how sudden death fractures timelines, leaving the living to inhabit parallel versions of what might have been. Darkly tender and intimate, the poem meditates on inherited grief, the ethics of survival, and the quiet punishment embedded in remembering those who left without explanation.
Enjoy Shradha Singh’s poem below. (Note: For the optimal reading experience click here).
To My Mother’s Former Fiancee
Shradha Singh
Shradha Singh is a third generation registered nurse, second generation Indian American, and first generation writer. This is her first time being published
