Why my eyes get heavier • Orooj-e-Zafar

Pain was once the taste of a headache

on the bridge of my mouth, the quiver 

of my hungry fingers, the pining

pangs and the screams of every cell

that made me.

But pain matured:

now it precipitates to weights

and gravity

making my every projection

a center to act on.

I am a host.

My ends are vulnerable,

easy to encompass,

simpler still to cut open.

So hear this—

When you ask me to walk a mile

in your shoes, know that I couldn't even stand

my own.

-by Orooj-e-Zafar, from heart the size of a loosening fist