Edited by Alloe Mak and Liam Mason

He used to make it for me when I would go over on Friday nights.

Now that we live together, he makes it when I can’t get out of bed. 

The apartment smells like garlic, cream, fettuccine, and parmesan clinging to each other.

His hands smell like thyme and burned knuckles.

I roll over as he enters the room, bringing the creamy concoction towards me.

He sets it on the nightstand.

I kiss his hands and say, “You mold and craft like God creating Adam.

You slice like a sacrifice.

You cook like it’s a prayer.”

He laughs, “It is, I’m feeding a saint.”

Outside of these four walls, this delicious-smelling apartment, and loving bed,

the world can’t decide if we should exist.

I ignore the faint light from my phone:

Notifications, headlines, protests, bans.

Inside, he wipes the sauce from my mouth as I bite at his fingers.

My grandmother used to make something like this, but with no meat or cheese.

She called it macarona bel laban.

Pasta with yogurt.

She would make it when the markets had to shut down.

When the bombs came like a curfew.

In Gaza, they said boys must not look at each other for too long.

But my uncle’s journal told a different story.

Folded pages, pressed flowers,

a letter addressed to someone named Fazal,

tucked inside a Mahmoud Darwish poetry book,

like it belonged there. 

He stirs the Alfredo with the same rhythm he uses to breathe—

slow, careful, gentle.

I wrap my arms around him from behind,

cheek pressed to the back of his shoulder, hands feeling his ribs.

I wonder,

who’s missing a rib?

Me or him,

him or me.

Isn’t it supposed to be the girl?

Maybe both have one,

or maybe we don’t.

Maybe that’s why it aches, maybe that’s why it hurts to breathe near him.

Some nights we eat in silence,

watching queer people kiss on TV

like it’s nothing,

as if it didn’t take centuries,

blood, beatings,

and buried names, to get here.

I say, “Do you think there were people like us in Babylon?”

He nods.

“In Babylon, In Timbuktu. In Hindustan. In Cairo. 

In Gaza. In Texas. 

In villages, they bombed, before they could write down our names.”

I think of the girls,

braiding each other’s hair in courtyards, 

touching wrists beneath silks,

loving without a word for it.

But then, I think of hell.

Of damnation—

Of all the things that would happen to someone like me.

How many nights have I begged a God I don’t know how to face?

Sometimes, I lie awake next to him and think about how far I’ve strayed.

How far I’ve run into this body, this softness, this sin.

I whisper prayers into my pillow, and I pray for him, too. 

Sometimes, I wonder if I love him more than I love God.

Sometimes, I know I do. 

When I cry, he doesn’t stop me.

He just says,

“Eat. Your pasta’s getting cold.”

And I do. 

Because I know

some people never get to.

We love in whispers,

in the clink of forks,

in leftover Tupperware.

We love like all the people who couldn’t before us,

who learned to find love and joy

in stolen kitchens,

and flour-dusted hands.

He packs up the remaining pasta, putting it in the fridge.

I do the dishes. 

The angels turn their faces.

But if the sky ever breaks,

I hope it finds me here.

In his kitchen, full and warm.