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I’ve heard all these years
about the bunks and their hardness.
I’ve never felt them.
I’ve only heard their stories.
But, now I’m in a bunk,
and I probably shouldn’t be here.
I’m breaking rules as usual.
I want to feel what this hard surface feels like on my back.
I am lying down,
and feeling what Bubbe felt.
I remember the stories of how she would sleep on hay or straw.
There’s a bed above me.
We’re in bunks,
and I’m imagining the bunks,
and I’m lying here thinking about bunks.
It’s time to get up.
Dr. Tamara MC is an Applied Linguist who focuses on language, culture, and identity, specifically her hybrid identity of growing up simultaneously Jewish and Muslim. She has her Ph.D from the University of Arizona where she majored in Pedagogy and minored in Middle Eastern and North African Studies. Dr. MC researches the Holocaust and writes about her experiences as a third-generation Holocaust survivor. She is currently working on publishing her first memoir, Grandmother: Life, Death, and Rebirth. It is the story about the death of her Holocaust survivor grandmother and the death of her marriage to her Bengali Muslim husband. tamaramc.com. youtube.com/user/tamaramcvlogs.
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