FROM THE BLACKGUARD ARCHIVES:

The Only Stone

A Poem.

my pen is unable to breathe words, my fingers are tired forcing it to spill curse, my skull is fracturing under the bust, my eyes are bleeding out the rust, my lungs are choking on charcoal dust,

No, I don’t blame them.

They just made it a little worse, Cruel, unnatural, and perverse. The ones they killed upon the hill, On the road that watched them still.

Those women with their breasts cut, Those men with their fingers chopped, Those children with their cries forever shut, Those youth with their futures dropped.

I don’t blame anything but the road. The way it also snatched you where things erode.

Your broken words always brought loam. Now those missing stutters took away my only little home. I find myself through them again, Only to remember the forgotten strain.

I stood there as I always did, You just stopped noticing what those knives slit.

Tell me —

Were they forgotten all at once? Or little by little? Just as their bodies turned to salt, Brittle by brittle. Until their names became another word, That you write blackguard.

I know this ink is a useless, shallow art, It cannot beat life back into a numb heart. But these broken lines are my only stone, To keep your ghosts from wandering alone.

No, I don’t blame you… I just blame the road.

Photo by Ali Aliakbari on Unsplash

© 2026 Samir Haider. All Rights Reserved.

Hello all readers and poetry lovers. This poem is an experiment in processing a long-standing trauma and grief. It is about what happens to a home when it no longer sustains the definition of one. For the historical and emotional reality behind these lines, please read my personal essay “The Road They Named After Blood.” That way, you will be able to make sense of these lines. The essay is pinned below. Thank you.

[embed]The Road They Named After Blood A homecoming with broken homes.samirhaider.medium.com

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