Unheard Cries Poem by Bishnupada Sethi

In the dying breath
of Two Thousand Twenty-Five,
we pause at the threshold,
listening for the echoes that refuse to fade.

A child still wanders the empty street,
calling a name the wind has stolen—
her mother's, lost to the quiet violence of fate.
Somewhere a lover traces
the outline of an absent hand,
heart cracked open like a fault line that never closes.
Grief sits heavy in kitchens, in bedrooms, in silent cars,
mourning fathers, sisters, brothers, friends—
the irreplaceable gone,
leaving voids nothing can fill.

Fortunes crumbled
like dry earth underfoot;
businesses shuttered, homes foreclosed,
men and women walking roads
that lead nowhere.

The earth itself rose in fury—
wildfires devoured hills and homes,
floodwaters swallowed villages whole,
earthquakes split the ground like old promises,
cyclones tore roofs from the sky.
Backbones broke beneath the weight of survival.

In hospital corridors pain echoes loud,
in orphanages small hands clutch thin blankets,
in old-age homes eyes stare at calendars
frozen on yesterday,
in asylums voices speak to walls
that never answer.

Power was abused in shadowed rooms;
girls and women bore wounds unseen,
faith, colour, and caste became
excuses for cruelty,
difference punished by fists, words, and worse.
The tyrant walked free, smiling,
while victims learned
the bitter taste of silence.

And so the year ends,
not with fireworks
but with this quiet catalogue of pain.
Given a choice, many would erase it—
burn every page, scatter the ashes,
wishing Two Thousand Twenty-Five
to vanish unheard.

Yet even as we turn away,
the cries remain,
soft as falling snow,
insistent as breath:
Remember us.
Remember.