By Emma Nakhle
10th grade | Stuyvesant High School | New York
Finalist, Climate and Environment category
With lines from "Domestic Violence Is Cost of Climate Change for Sri Lankan Women" by Dimuthu Attanayake, a Pulitzer Center reporting project
Droughts, floods, and storms
spinning in this hurricane
The earth bleeds
and with it
its women
Angry men, silent women, rivulets
flow into the ground
that shudders with their cries
The rain falls red
Rains stop, droughts come,
and then there are cyclones,
fists to curb the damp grounds,
the burnt, cracked and dry like skin,
the food slipping through
shaking fingers
Their dignity is shattered
Family seems to slip through the
cracks
grains of rice wash away in the rain
but it doesn’t
wash away the bruises
Women obey because they have to survive
but even the earth seems to shudder
Death is not so
thrashing
or distant
for us both
Shall we drown hand in hand?
Emma Nakhle is a 16-year-old rising junior currently living in New York City. She enjoys reading, writing (especially poetry), photography, and boxing. She also adores spending time with her cat and dog, Remy and Max. She enjoys taking time to understand and advocate for complex issues such as domestic abuse and even its overlap with areas like climate change.
Read more winning entries from the 2024 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.