shira, she/her, 18. ig: shromes. i pulled at every thread that twined to create my heart in order to create more room for sorrow.

so-much-depends-upon-a:

theverysarcasticscientist:

Your grandparents are from a tiny shtetl in Romania. Its population was microscopic. Everyone you know is descended from the residents of that shtetl.

You meet an old friend on Ben Yehuda Street. You meet an old enemy on Ben Yehuda Street. You meet yourself on Ben Yehuda Street.

You pick up a coin. It curses at you in all the tongues of the majority peoples of a thousand nations.

Someone says something in Yiddish. You understand it perfectly. You don’t speak Yiddish.

The evil eye approaches you. You spit at it three times and it scuttles away.

Your family is simultaneously filthy communists–and capitalist pigs. Your family is simultaneously too insular and closed off from everyone else–and too normal-looking and infiltrating the rest of society. Your family should simultaneously go back to the Middle East–and get the hell out of the Middle East. 

Every food you have ever eaten contains schmaltz or matzo meal. You bite into an apple. It is full of the powdered bread of affliction. It is so dry.

The countries your ancestors came from don’t exist anymore, or if they do they are in a different place to where your ancestors actually lived. Why does the earth spit you out? Perhaps it knows something you don’t.