The burden of stories does not break one’s back, but it never lets one remain whole either. It hunches a person over, making them useless.
The doctor says, “You have no illness.” Yet, in every corner of my body, a sorrow lies sighing. “Find a psychologist,” he advises, “and release these burdens so the sighs escaping from every joint may cease.”
I know, too, that my tissues have accumulated stacks of painful stories. Reservoirs of tears are overflowing, lava waiting to erupt.
I have sealed great volcanoes shut with the lids of life’s little distractions.
And now, I fear opening them.
Is there anyone in this world who can face my volcanoes? Who can build a dam before them? Who can pull me from their fire?
I don’t think any psychologist has that strength.
The burden of stories is so immense that no thread remains graspable.
No ending is forgotten; no beginning ceases to startle.
Some words pierce the heart; some lamentations tear at my hair.
One story has been sitting with me on the seashore for what feels like centuries.
I try to lift it, shake it, make it move—yet it refuses.
It neither drowns nor rises.
Until it reaches some conclusion, I must remain lost in the waves with it, carrying all my sighs.
Another sits by the open window beside my bed, blowing smoke toward the compound outside.
“Jump!” I tell her. “Leave the cigarette behind and step away from the window!”
She puts down the cigarette but picks up a vape instead.
“If I could have stepped away, I would have by now,” she says. “Now, I must live as smoke itself.”
Yet another story lies in a suffocating, locked room in a distant town, drenched in sweat from the unbearable heat.
“Sofi, I will die,” she tells me every day.
“Everyone must die,” I reply. “Show me how you can live, and I will believe you!”
But she does not want to live.
“I once fought the battle to live,” she says.
“I have been paying for it ever since.”
She neither forgives herself nor manages to exist.
In the drawing room, leaning against the wall, another story is weeping torrents.
Decades have passed, yet it finds no peace.
Some torments come to stay; they never expire!
Their agony never relents.
Another story sits on my bed, wailing uncontrollably.
I grab its feet, I beg, I plead—somehow, let it return to a past long gone.
Yet it refuses to move.
It, too, has sworn that it will forever remain part of the present.
One story lingers in the sweet April morning rain, sitting by the window, getting soaked.
It refuses to accept a farewell.
Another stands at the edge of a long lake, humming a tune for centuries—so much so that its melody has now turned into a lament.
One should never wait on paths for so long.
It never understands this.
It believes that one day, its music will weave its magic and become the comfort of a heart.
But how can a lifetime of anguish be captured in mere words?
How can I write so many stories?
Where do I store them all?
My cupboards, notebooks, and pages fail to contain them!
They have clung to every available part of my being.
One has latched onto my teeth, and another has lodged itself in the corners of my head.
Some clutch my knees; others grasp my wrists.
The one with nowhere else to go has settled in my chest, clinging to my windpipe.
I take two steps forward, and their weight makes me gasp for breath.
And then everyone asks,
“Why are you so out of breath?”
They all see my laboured breathing.
No one sees the stories residing within me.
And I, too, have grown accustomed to this burden.
I flee from them, yet I could not tear them away from myself.
“Why do I feel like you are hiding some deep sorrow?”
This is the question of an old sage.
But how can I explain?
Does sorrow announce itself, saying, “Here, I am hiding!”?
No, it simply buries itself in a corner and then calls out, “Come find me!”
I have no time to search for sorrow!
There are so many other fragments of life to gather.
These are not just small, fleeting stories—these are lifetimes of earned experiences.
They can not be conveyed in a few words.
I can not simply sit and pour them onto paper in two hours!
How many sleepless nights must I spend, peeling them off the crumbling walls of abandoned homes?
How many people’s honour and disgrace must I sift through?
Only then will the weight lift from my heart and mind.
The burden of stories is not one that can be shrugged off with a shake of the head.
Stories take root in our souls, falling in love with us.
And no old man’s prayers or mystic’s spells can banish them.
We try a hundred different ways to pry them off, but they refuse to leave!
Perhaps, the day they finally lift from my shoulders, my bones will find new life.
Perhaps my elbows will be freed from the creases of my sheets.
Perhaps the wailing breath in my weary lungs will finally be quiet.
Even the doctor says,
“At this age, you shouldn’t be in this much pain.”
“This pain does not belong to your years.”
I look back at least ten years behind me and find their traces.
If my age is still too young,
How can i see their traces a decade before?
Why do some people’s dreams consume their lives so completely that even their youth can not restore them?
If today I am still too young,
Then what was I ten years ago?
What was I twenty years ago?
How long have I been living in an aged soul?
Some princesses are taken away by monsters.
Others fall under the curse of witches’ maledictions.
And no matter how radiant or beautiful they are,
Their souls become veiled in darkness.
Perhaps I am one such darkness, too.
_________________
sofia kashif
March 2025
SofiaLog 