Shame

by Faris Kassisieh

I woke up yesterday. Confronted by my own filth. Empty coke cans and empty pizza box and empty bags of chips. Yarn—Chunky yarn. Breathing yarn. Shampoo bottles peeking out of unpacked bags—and I was confronted by my own filth. Fermentation. When you mix water and sugar and yeast in a jar and impale the lid with the bent orange knife that’s wiser than you and leave it to grow after you take your sugar cube and go to bed. And your mother (what?), she throws it out the next morning because it made the kitchen smell. Confronted by filth. By snails captured in a fishbowl, perpetually imprisoned under cling wrap until the hole you put there for them to breathe becomes their Messiah (I think he was Jewish. I think.) and they hang onto the ceiling and the walls: Omnipresent trails of slime, the same ones the Tralfamadorians saw in the sky. Rolling under my quilt (what the hell is a quilt) until my sheet was speckled with red dots—a rash maybe—maybe bacne—maybe the Accutane leaving my system. Tiny mysterious ones. I don’t know. Until eyelids are aroused by bloodshot eyes. Until they flutter open. Until they climax in a spectacle of styes. Pupils dilating. Skin oily (oily oily oily). Bubbly thick stagnant. Filth.

Malak Allawama ´23

What We Carry

by Marym Younes

It is funny how both, my mum and I, carry bags but have completely different perspectives about them. My mum carries a bag that I like to call the black hole. You can never expect what could be in there. Even the most random thing that you would never assume you will ever need might be there. She still has a letter which I gave her when I was only 7 years old as a gift on her birthday. She even carries a mini hairbrush and some hair ties in case one of my sisters needs them when we are out. She would never forget to carry tissues because she knows I will always finish the ones with me and ask her for extra. She always remembers to check for my father’s watch as he always forgets it. She even carries gloves for my younger sister because she will get cold outside. She carries everything in her black hole. Her bag is so large and heavy that sometimes I tell her to not carry most of what is in there, but she just refuses. No matter how hard I try to convince her to get a smaller bag, she tells me that she needs a bag that large because she needs to carry us all in it. I also carry a bag, but though the word is the same, I carry a completely different bag. In my bag, there are notebooks with my dreams written between their lines. There is also a pencil case which is a gift from my sister that I see her face every time I look at it. I carry the hurry and stress in my mechanical pencil from every test I had using it. My mum also gave me a card that has some of the prophet’s sayings on it and I never take it out of my bag to keep me safe. I carry passion and fear from the unknown future every time I carry my bag. I carry uncertainty, hope and most importantly, I carry myself in this bag. The idea of us both carrying totally different bags makes me wonder whether one day my mum had a similar bag like mine. She always put us first and above everything else. I have always admired her for being such a great mother, but the older she gets, the heavier her bag gets, and the more it becomes our bag rather than hers. I get scared every time I think that one day I will be carrying the same bag. I get scared that I will be responsible for other people that I might forget myself without even noticing. It is important to care about your family in which you find yourself, but she should understand to carry her bag and not carry our bags for us. It comes to 11

me, sometimes, that it is not my mum or me who carry our bags, but that the bags actually carry us. They carry the sides in our hearts that we find so hard to express. My mum’s bag carries her anywhere she goes. It carries her family whom she cares about the most. It carries her life. And so does my bag. My bag carries me as well. It carries my future that I always have in front of me as the greatest priority. And that is what my mum and I carry, or maybe what carries us.