The Faithful Pen
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Dr Ranbir Laishram
Guns can shut a mouth, but they can't stop the thinking mind,
Can't quiet the heart that keeps naming who is gone,
Can't steal the faithful pen that keeps writing what happened.
Ashes fall, but stories do not die.
Years move on and small things rise again:
A laugh from a doorway,
A child’s shoes left by the bed.
Soft whispers gather into one long story.
Thread by thread we pull the past close.
We sew up the walls where bullets hit,
We sew the kitchen, the porch, the school.
No thunder can take away what we felt:
The weight of leaving, the warm return,
The names we speak like prayers at night,
The recipes kept to feed the next day.
We keep plain things in our pockets—
A button, a scrap of paper, a stone—
And with our hands we turn them into books.
Ink remembers what guns tried to bury.
When the world drums loud and hard,
We answer with small quiet things:
A line on paper, a candle in the window,
A low song until more voices join.
These small resistances outlast the blast.
They trace a path through broken ground,
They hold the face from slipping away,
They guard the promise of morning.
Guns can shut a mouth, but they can't stop the thinking mind,
Can't quiet the heart that keeps naming who is gone,
Can't steal the faithful pen that keeps writing what happened.
Ashes fall, but stories do not die.
Years move on and small things rise again:
A laugh from a doorway,
A child’s shoes left by the bed.
Soft whispers gather into one long story.
Thread by thread we pull the past close.
We sew up the walls where bullets hit,
We sew the kitchen, the porch, the school.
No thunder can take away what we felt:
The weight of leaving, the warm return,
The names we speak like prayers at night,
The recipes kept to feed the next day.
We keep plain things in our pockets—
A button, a scrap of paper, a stone—
And with our hands we turn them into books.
Ink remembers what guns tried to bury.
When the world drums loud and hard,
We answer with small quiet things:
A line on paper, a candle in the window,
A low song until more voices join.
These small resistances outlast the blast.
They trace a path through broken ground,
They hold the face from slipping away,
They guard the promise of morning.