Page 6 - ADU Voice Volume 4 Issue 2

5 Voice | Spring 2025

OUT WITH THE OLD

AND IN WITH THE...

huh?

By Mariam Khattab

t’s a shame, really, when you end up having
to throw something away after you’ve
Ihad it for so long. Rationally, I’m aware
that it’s just a couple of pillowcases. Old,
yellow-stained, sweat-swelled pillowcases
that I have no real attachment to. But there’s
still this light feeling of loss surmounting the
mundanity of what I’m doing.

I just get used to things, you know? I know
they’re going to get replaced at some point
and I do try my best to think it a given of life–
a mere inevitability – but then it happens and,
well, I’m left wondering if I truly need to
discard such long companions of my auburn
curls. But, alas, they’re just pillowcases. Not
even that many. So, it’s fine.

And it remains fine for the duration it takes
me to boot my car up, drop my sister off
at the hairdresser’s and loop back around
to the supermarket. Hell, it remains fine
beyond that, as I trudge through cacophonous
lumps of folk, all so deeply within their
shells and overtaken by their urgencies
or intrigues to ever truly make me way to
pass without having to manoeuvre myself.
I would even go so far as to say it’s all
fine when I first lay hands on the smooth
encasement stuffed with the new pillowcases.