Where stones wept

(A lament for Sohag Mia, Mitford Hospital, July 2025)

Quoted “leave no stone unturned.”
So they didn’t.
They were being practical
With a mob
They turned every stone into a sentence
not for justice,
but for execution.
They lifted it not to build,
but to break.
Not to lay foundations,
but to crush skulls next to the whites of healing

It happened outside a hospital.
The sterilized faith of Mitford.
Inside, doctors prescribe hope,
outside, men prescribe silence.

Sohag Mia.
A man without hashtags.
He wore rust
the scent of tears,sweat and honest labor
He sold scrap, not souls.
But in a world that values clout over character,
Money over friendships
Body over soul
even dignity can get lynched.

Dragging him through dust,
Dust never felt dirtier
Stoned him as if pain had no audience.
And it did.
Oh, it did.

Phones came out before fists.
Comments before cries.
Someone whispered, “Bro, this gon’ go viral.”
Another sighed, “Aww... I feel bad for this!”
Another zoomed in,
Blood like a filter,
chasing views
Humanity is already deleted......
out of existence.

And those stones?
yes, the stones
they felt it.
One cracked under guilt.
It wanted to split the earth and crawl inside.
If it had hands, it would’ve dug its own grave.

But we?
We stood and framed
We do that.....
It's easy, normal, trendy
It's fashion, trauma-chic
Gruesome-aesthetic
It's diamond, filthy
Couldn't make guilty
polished and petrified,
like statues made of Wi-Fi and apathy.

Even the pavement turned red with blood and blush
But the crowd?
They livestreamed death and called it “content.”
They edited out the guilt,
added sad music,
and scrolled to the next dopamine drop.

They say “you’ve hit rock bottom.”
But this wasn’t bottom.
This was the graveyard beneath civilization,
where even rats cover their eyes.

"Oh! don’t take it to heart.”
...........................
When the heart was cracked open on concrete,
and Gen heart-reacted but never acted.

"what goes around comes around.”
But how?
When karma is busy watching reels
and injustice wears light-rings?

We? the woke generation?
but we sleep-scroll past murder,
we double-tap tragedy,
we repost pain with “#soSad”,
and forget before midnight.
Even taylor swift stays longer

Can this be more than a video?
More than a post?
More than a reel lost in the algorithm?
Let this haunt the timeline,
until the servers sweat shame.

When a man dies outside a hospital,
and no one shouts,
no one runs,
no one throws a stone for him
only at him-
then
this is no longer society.
This is theatre.
Blood-soaked.
Audience silent.
Phones lit
Hearts dim.

But we?
had skin, voices, choice
and we chose
to stand,
to stare,
to scroll.

cry,
tremble,
not a crack in our calm.

The stone remembered
what it did.
We forgot......
Actually never remembered
Not even in the moment
The stone,
for all its silence,
still felt.
Still broke.

But in the end,
we became stones
that never were.
Not solid,
not ancient,
not mournful,
just empty shapes
mimicking matter,
Within heartbeats
pretending to exist.