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March 2022
Kankana Basu
kankanabasu@hotmail.com
Bio Note: An Indian writer, the fractured nature of lives led in the city of my residence, Mumbai, continues to intrigue me, and constantly works itself into my writing. My published works of fiction include a novel, Cappuccino Dusk and two collections of short stories, Vinegar Sunday and Lamplight: Paranormal Stories from the Hinterlands. I review books and write on human interest issues for the newspapers. Contributing short stories and poems to online magazines in a sporadic manner is an ongoing passion; most of these revolve around the secret yearnings of seemingly ordinary urban people.

November Noon

Darkest of afternoons
November in my soul,
home alone, once again.
The tunnel of rooms
stretch empty and silent,
sentinel, python witness,
to my splintering.
The doorbell 
is unlikely to ring
on a day as dark
as this.

The tree-tops outside
my windows, cavort
in their macabre dance,
gleeful to resonate
as I disintegrate,
slowly, but surely.
Cold westerly winds
cut into my viscera,
disappointed at finding
no blood within,
merely arid desolation.

A perfect day, really,
To end it all.

Fall like a dead weight 
into the abyss between
lunch and siesta,
should I….?
Attain, finally, 
that enviable state, 
that goes by the fanciful term,
‘oblivion’
of the eternal kind…?

Storm ravaged sparrows
arrive shrieking
at the windows
their fidgety diamond eyes
seeking refuge.
Who am I, 
to shoo them away?
Windswept myself,
and born of a thousand storms.
Could these birds truly be
the souls of the dear departed
sent to watch over me
in my hour of crisis?

Darkest of afternoons,
November in my soul,
a perfect day for endings.

But not today,
maybe not today…
I’ll hang in here awhile,
pause
analyze 
reflect
reconsider
reconstruct events,
take stock, once more,
of the balance sheet of life,
procrastinate.
Maybe, and then maybe not,
stall the death wish
for now.

Today, I might choose
to merely tend
to the shivering sparrows, 
stay alive, 
another day.
                        
©2022 Kankana Basu
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL
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