It’s November and They’re Banning Books

by Nora Gupta (she/her) / Poetry
The Bronx High School of Science, NY

Who she is almost doesn’t matter—only that she can’t be herself—not on the cover, not in front of this class.Dancing on a milky toadstool, she’s got to go—can’t reveal her identity in Chapter Four, questions bubbling like manilla clams in low tide, revealed. 

Her eyes hide the velvet cinnamon of November’s cool kiss all autumn, moist and littered, scattered across Chapter Seven like a mural of dead leaves. In the real world November’s more of a cornucopia, filled with snickering smoke, seasoned with those cinnamon eyes as PTA moms burn what they’re afraid of—books forbidden, sticky caramel chapters, sweetness authentic, but charred.  

And grinded and glazed and torn—their disgust with the internet, the teeth of their pride sharp as needles, pressing through the skin of what children shouldn’t see, what children shouldn’t be, swallowing her smoking cinnamon eyes whole. There’s nothing sweet about that.