A scale of pain and one side is heavier. I keep apologizing for the gentleness with which I came in to the world, and in which I’ve been left. Could my own ache stitch closed a girl’s perforations, remake her memory? I believe in objectivity. I doubt the transitive properties of pain. But no one is spared, and the scale changes, and the point of pain in your life rises to a certain height no matter your father’s voice or shelling at night. Writing this I try to believe it, but it rings false. And yet my friend, handled ungently, says, You cannot compare pain, to which I say, I try.