Anjana Basu

The Lane at the End of Love

The lane at the end of love is a winding place where jetlagged cockerels crow in mid-afternoon and cats in heat caterwaul reluctant to wait for evening in the corner shadowed by rubble and rubbish a debate over drugs breaks out and ends in the evening call for prayer. The girl oiling her hair on the terrace knows that he knows she will be there for that one stray sunset glance but knows that in this welling of knowledge, he will not. The knowledge of love is what they share along with the certainty that like the lane it will go nowhere but exhaust itself in the cat's cry and the rooster's untimely crowing in the broken brick and angry words of every day.

sunset
a streak of vermillion
in someone else's hair