The Blood Stained School Bag Poem by Namita Rani Panda

The school bag still lies there
The mute witness of the gruesome war
Amidst the ruins and fleshy flood
Torn and stained with gushing blood
Darkened by a deadly colour
That no child would dare to carry ever
Once dearest to a little cute dreamer
Rested on her free fragile shoulders
Her braids dancing lightly in the air
While with hurried hope
She's striding towards her future
The bag clung to her back
Like wings ready to rise high
To embrace the vast blue sky
Inside it must be there unfinished lessons,
Drawing of a beautiful globe
Surrounded by white doves
And a bright yellow sun
Perhaps a page with a half solved sum
And a notebook bearing her name
As if an unfurled flag of her fame
Her notebooks full of neatly written alphabets
Each a tender bud to bloom yet
The bag was heavy with the hope of a father
Who believed that education could rise above every war
And heavier with the love of a mother
Stuffed in the tiffin box prepared before dawn
While she pressed her little uniform
With careful hands
So that she would look the smartest amongst her friends
But alas! The road to school became a road of fire
The thunder of guns tore the morning apart
And the little girl
Who only carried a pen
To learn the lessons on peace
Was brutally torn to pieces
By bullets that knew no mercy
Now the abandoned bag
That lies in dust
Is a terrible question
That the wind asks
As a grieving mother
While turning the torn pages
That no answer can solve:
Why must a child's future be written in blood
When all she wished was
To write it in ink?
And somewhere beyond the smoke
Her dream still wanders
Looking for the little dreamer
Who left too soon
Leaving behind a school bag
Heavier than the ugly ghastly war
The straps of the bag flutter softly
As if calling her back
To lift it up once more
To return to the classroom of dreams
She never had the chance to reach
But the road is empty now
Only the bag remains amidst the roubles:
A testament of an eternal lesson
That the world refuses to learn-
When wars are fought
It's not the soldiers alone who fall
But the quiet unwritten future
Of the innocent buds is cruelly crushed
And with that is doomed the fate of a nation forever!