Journey Poem by BASAB CHAUDHURI

Every journey is woven of quiet refusals.
When I turn to the right, the left still whispers my name;
when I follow the left, the right grows heavy with unshed tears.

No arrival is free of longing.
Each destination carries the shadow
of roads that waited and were left behind.

My life gathers itself in these absences—
a ledger of closed doors,
of silences where footsteps might have been,
of paths I never paused to count
until they began counting