Author’s note: Every day last year, I would spend lunch in the library working on school work and making small talk with friends. I would walk past a table with a small, quiet Indian girl, who minded her own business and worked diligently. I always wondered what her opinions were, what the world looked from her eyes between the two folds of her hijab. I would never know, and I regret it to this day. I wrote this poemafter Chetana Guduru was tragically murdered last year. Many students were grieving, and I felt similar pains when my sister died 5 years earlier. I empathized with my friends, with the student body, and out came this, both in attempts to soothe the raw wound we suffered, and to smooth the scars of my past.

Sacred Stones Lost In River

I blow for you
My lung’s winter winds