The Library of Unlived Days

Shelves as tall as minarets.

I walk through barefoot
the tiles whisper in Urdu:
“Kya tu waqai zinda hai?”
Are you truly alive?

Each book has a spine like mine.
Bent. Soft.
Carrying all I did not become.

One volume hums like a harmonium.
Inside: a girl who said no at seventeen
and left her village with a lover who wrote poems
on her stomach.

Another: a widow who refused to be purified.
She danced on Muharram night,
and they said her hips carried sin.

And one thin pamphlet, almost invisible
just says:
“If you had screamed that day.”

I do not borrow a book.
I burn one.

Ash is lighter than regret.