Silenced Screams Echoes Poem by Edith Niemeyer

Silenced Screams' Echoes

A Writ for the Unanswered

Penned from the words of Edith Lynn Niemeyer

There are rooms
where yesterday sits
upon metal shelves.

Row after row.

Boxes.

Some bearing names.
Some bearing numbers.
Some bearing nothing
that tells us
who once breathed
within the story they contain.

Dust settles differently
when no one comes looking.

It gathers along the edges,
softening ink,
covering dates,
resting upon photographs
of eyes that once looked
toward a tomorrow
they would never see.

Inside—

a folded shirt.
A strand.
A photograph.
A receipt.
A key whose door
may no longer exist.

Fragments.

Evidence.

Remnants of somebody
who once answered
when their name was called.

Outside—

another kind of dust gathers.

Years.

Decades.

Questions.

Memories fading
from those who once remembered
exactly how they laughed.

Some were found alone.

Some beside the hands
of someone they knew.

Some crossed the path
of a stranger.

Some deaths were called
self-inflicted—

leaving behind those
who still whisper,

But why?

Was there something we missed?

Was there something
they could not tell us?

And some—

have waited so long
even their names
have been misplaced by time.

Unknown.

Unidentified.

Jane Doe.

John Doe.

No.

Those are placeholders.

Somewhere beneath those words
is a name.

A birthday.

A favorite song.

Perhaps someone who hated peas,
loved thunderstorms,
sang terribly in the car,
kept old birthday cards,
or called somebody
just to say—

I made it home.

Before the file—

there was a life.

Before the evidence number—

there was a name.

Before the photograph
was sealed inside plastic—

there was a face
somebody touched.

Before they became
a case—

they were
somebody.

And somewhere,

beneath cardboard,
paper,
plastic,
ink
and years—

the unanswered remain.

Their screams may have been silenced.

But silence
never stopped
the echo.

Listen.

Not for accusation.

Not for spectacle.

Not for the gruesome details
that make strangers stare.

Listen for them.

For the life
behind the manner of death.

For the human being
behind the case number.

For the question
that survived
when they did not.

Perhaps justice waits there.

Perhaps truth.

Perhaps only a name
waiting to be spoken again.

But until every answer
that can still be found
has been sought—

do not mistake dust
for an ending.

Somewhere,

in a room filled
with forgotten boxes,

one particle of dust
has just been disturbed.

A hand has touched the lid.

A box opens.

And after all these years—

someone
is listening.