Once I Heard Poem by Ishita Agarwal

Once I heard from outside my window
Coming from within a land, a voice of wind
She was howling, calling for freedom
In her hopeless yet determined call.

A moaning call to the non-existent
Who heard her and saw her, yet quietly.
The wind of within of the land far away
It was no land but an island droughted.

Droughted with scars of a million marks
The island sat lonely far away unseen
From mine and the world's ignorance,
Was silent and a voiceless void calling out.

From within my Elysian walls I heard
The wind from within the land afar.
To see what my court would say,
I asked person to person, if they had heard.

It could be heard by me, so clear
On lunch, on dinner in sleep along.
It's daunting that none of them heard
The screams of a land, broken but rooted.

So soft yet so hard within it, the land
Would never not implode by feet a ton
Yet will immerse in endless deep dark
If a mere needle a loved one would prick.