Balachandran V's poem is about the shock of being rejected, most likely in love, though the poem never says so outright. It begins with a cluster of blunt words, "jilt, spurn, thwart or ditch," as if the speaker is searching for the right label for what has happened. What follows is a series of physical images: falling overboard, the world turned upside down, hanging like a bat. Each one captures the dizzy loss of balance that comes with sudden bad news.
The feeling then sharpens into impact. Words like "stunned," "shattered" and "devastated" are paired with the sensations of a blow to the face, breaking glass and a blowtorch blast. By the end, the noise has died away. In the lonely evenings the speaker simply looks at a world "in smithereens" and listens to the heart's "silent screams." The mood moves from violent shock to quiet, bewildered grief, and that stillness is what makes the ending hurt most.