Four Clover Life- By Namrata Shailendra Singh

  Before I forget to tell you, I have decided not to participate in the Ganpati celebrations this year nor host Thanksgiving dinner. I need time to grieve. I thought we all needed it, or time to ponder, and reflect, and absorb what the pandemic made us experience. It was nothing short of a massacre last year. Everywhere you move, there are inescapable reminders that the pandemic is not yet over, and even if it was, it has scarred us in ways that would take years to heal, if not forget. Do we inspire so little emotion in each other as a community that we have ceased to care about loss? If it’s not mine, then have I lost anything? Society’s debauchery and superfluousness appal me. Our memories are short-lived. We get over too soon. We are desperate to celebrate; without the razzle-dazzle, is there anything to live, I wonder. The show must go on; the show must go with pizazz.  Since I cannot afford the panache, I will hermit myself close to you. The world will not stop by to notice my a

The toast burns to  obsidian crumbs as the putrid smell starts to soar interrupting the meditation of my words that I routinely slit my heart to pour. Does it matter if I bleed or not They concluded I am not a writer yet The story of a thousand days and night Not a cent, a dime, a quarter it gets. Yes, I have miserably disappointed the masses But my failure, though, is yet to come For I continue to blow the dandelion Until I choose to be done. A 2nd-grade nipper stands alone a body deformed by torrential pain  the ground beneath has cracked wide open as he flails to breathe and walk again how to feel warm in the arctic of grief when loved ones float far, far away the mother who packed his lunchboxes the father who gave him sobriquets Yes, life has struck him hard indeed But mind you, his defeat is yet to come For he continues to blow the dandelion Until he chooses to be done.  Sifting through  anguish, anger, and despair She stares at the  heap of hands-me-down In the white and  elite