On Liminality • Curated by Sanam Sheriff

“Our mother’s hands made us out of / buried bone, dreams burnt like wings / birding flightless girls.”

“My grandmother died three years before I was born, when my mother was pregnant with my older brother. I cannot tell you what that time was like, because no one speaks of it.”

“At some point I became keenly aware / of my unhinged potential to be immersed / in the nothingness that follows, / you know what I mean?”

“jules was not / trying / to be a man / either. us lit blue / on the hotel / bed by a dim bulb.”

“When I think of Pauline screaming my heart slips and I remember being clumsy with your dead body, knowingknowing you were still there zooming around the room scared but listening”

“Even at its inception, friendship demands sincerity. Sadeeq derives from sidq, truth, so the bond begins not in affection, but in honesty.”

“By eighth grade, I was numb. Baba’s growing-up stories described a country that only existed in the minds of those who had left.”

“I was a veritable saint. Not that I was opposed to doing any of those things, I just didn’t happen to do them, I didn’t know how to be more of a sinner.”

If I haven’t been home in three years, does home still exist?