Red

a poem by Namrata Basu

She wasn’t one of those heroic hearts.
So she slit her vein,
And out oozed the crimson tide
With which she filled her pen
And inscribed this lyric
With paramount pride.

She wrote of him.
How he would do nothing
From morn to night,
But only love her.
She had written for quite some time now
And she was in a critical plight.

Many a sundown
Had they spent together,
When he had held her hand
And prepared promises of love.
Then he left that hand forever,
Which now bled for him in this forlorn land.

Her heart had ceased to beat
Yet her hand refused to abstain.
Death had now dawned upon
And so flew her spirit from her cadaver
Leaving behind her corpse and her pen
And an eternal love chronicle in vermilion.