Mandy Shunnarah
to the troubled house guest of my once & future self
“Why not just try to settle in, take your place, however undeserved, among the fortunate? Why not trust that almost everyone, even in his own house, is a troubled guest?”
— “The Inheritance”, Stephen Dunn
I try not to laugh at you, who couldn’t have known yet
that “it gets better” is more truth than platitude, but only if you hold on
long enough. You used to weep in your campus apartment
for a cheap old house in a mid-sized city, big enough for a desk & yoga
mat, a built-in bookshelf, cats basking in the windows, &
curbside recycling. The luxury of an unpretentious life lived well.
My love, you got the house & cats, the desk & the mat, in a city
greener than not & a neighbour who teaches you the names of yard botanies
& listens when you tell her the one you know well: the fruitless
grapevine that clings to your bush is the same varietal that twined
Sedo & Teta’s chain-link fence, the one she plucked to make
grape leaves—your favourite. The neighbour will die peacefully of old age
& you’ll take her cat, who will perch in the window with a view
of the home she can’t return to, howls of longing punctuating her days,
& you’ll wonder if she’d rather have died than leave.
After, you’ll lose the husband but keep the house—& most
of the cats. You will weep for him once but live twice.
You keep the house with the inheritance from your grandfather
exiled from his own first home. What’s the benefit
of hindsight, if not its comedy, the slapstick of your existence:
Buying a home in the seat of the empire while
your friends suffer landlords—thanks to your Falastini family
—& your property taxes fund the horrors
that murder your cousins. You’ll think of this every day,
but keep the knives in the block this time, flush
the leftover opioids from ankle surgery, & remember to drink
water. & as you write this on the eve of another
ceasefire where the fire doesn’t cease, reading the news as the clowder
of cats crowds your lap, you’ll gaze at the black-&-white
photo of Sitti, your great-grandmother, in her Ramallah tatreez, taken
in 1946, the year your house was built, & recall the story
of her refusal when Sedo came to this country, saying, I was born
in Palestine & I’ll die in Palestine. I just hope it will be free.
Womb empty, you still carry her dream: You will be gloriously
& improbably alive on this burning planet,
glad you stayed to see our wanting turn becoming.
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer in Columbus, Ohio. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in 2024, and their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, was published by Diode Editions in 2025.