As a junior doctor, I’ve often found myself caught in the space between charts and cries—between what we measure and what we miss. This poem was born out of my daily encounters with patients whose pain is real but rarely recognized, especially when it doesn’t come with a scan, a number, or a name.
In busy outpatient clinics or overcrowded wards, I’ve seen how pain is filtered—by gender, by language, by socioeconomic status. I’ve seen women told to be stronger, men taught to suppress, children mislabeled, and the elderly dismissed. And I’ve felt helpless in systems that don’t always leave room for listening.
"The Weight of What Hurts" is a reflection on the pain we overlook, invalidate, or under-treat—not because we don't care, but because we haven't been taught to hold space for pain that doesn’t bleed visibly. Through this poem, I wanted to explore how deeply pain is shaped by class, gender, history, and expectation, and why making pain visible, believable, is the first step toward healing.
Pain is a whisper that no one hears,
a scream behind eyes filled with years—
of waiting rooms, of clipped answers,
of “It’s all in your head,” or
“You’re just anxious, dear.”
It nests inside the body’s soft corners,
in shadows of scars not yet given names.
It braids itself into bloodlines,
unspooling through veins thick with
generational silence.
She says it hurts,
but the white coats ask: “Where?”
as if pain were polite enough
to stay in one place,
as if it doesn't bleed through
the geography of gender and grace.
In her bones, centuries ache—
the weight of unpaid care,
of cooking with cramps,
of smiling through surgeries
they said she didn’t need.
Her pain is chronic,
and so is their doubt.
He limps into the clinic,
stoic, stitched into shame,
too poor to afford soft beds
or second opinions.
His pain is tolerated
until it becomes violent.
Then it’s a problem worth naming.
What of the boy
who winces from voices
and not from wounds?
The girl who can’t cry,
for no one taught her
how to grieve without guilt?
Their pain drips invisible
through the sieve of the system.
There is no triage
for invisible aches,
no code blue for
a soul collapsing slowly.
Pain matters—
when it is believed.
Pain matters—
when it is not gendered or priced.
Pain matters—
when silence doesn’t cost survival.
So listen.
Not for symptoms you can scan,
but for stories you haven’t lived.
Not just where it hurts,
but why.
And who is allowed to say so.
Let us build
a language wide enough
to hold all the hurting,
a care deep enough
to soften the scream
before it swells.
Because pain that is named
can become pain that is held.
And pain that is held—
can begin to heal.
Edited by Parth Sharma
Image by Parth Sharma
