VERSO / vol. 7 is a new form of sharing art and culture. Each month we’ll curate contributions of writing, poetry and visual art packaged along with personalized editorials and deliver them monthly.

We’re happy to share editorials and photos of already shipped packages with you here.

Dear reader,

My mother always asks me not to smile in photographs, so most childhood photos of me look sad. Even as a young teenager in my frilly pink dress before leaving to a school dance, my mouth is neutral and my eyes stare through blue mascara into the distance, with a background of patterned wallpaper that every jewish Russian immigrant had in the 80s. My mother believed we needed to be immortalised at our most composed and emotionless self, as if a smile is a crack threatening to reveal every family secret and trauma we sustained. Emotion is dangerous and my mother wanted to keep me safe, thus redacting any sign of it was her way of protecting me from vulnerability.

When my grandmother died over a year ago and we were having a last walk through her studio apartment, I chose a couple of crystal vases and a porcelain tea set to take back from Toronto to Amsterdam. There is so much intimacy in drinking from the same teacup that she drank from and keeping nicknacks in the crystal vase just like she did. My mother was worried that the fragile objects would break in my suitcase, and took every opportunity to point this out. But I am an expert packer, I wrapped each piece lovingly in socks, shirts, underwear, scarves—it is as if each fragile item would transform into a chrysalis ready to emerge on the other side of an ocean. The reason nothing breaks is because it doesn’t move and has enough layers around it to absorb the shock.

It has been a difficult few years for me, my grandmother died, my father died, my dog died, my marriage of 25 years ended, and I moved homes. Through all this I’ve managed to keep my life together, cook healthy food, show up to work, and stick to my responsibilities, you know—be strong and productive. I have meticulously wrapped every part of myself so as not to let my emotions destroy all of my composure. This is what I’ve been taught. I grieve in small increments, just a minuscule amount that the bundles of layers allow.

In my family we say that breaking something brings change. I grew up hearing, “don’t worry about that shattered [insert fragile object], it will bring change for the better”. Because entropy is not possible, once something does break, we have to move through it. How can we look at something in pieces and see change instead of damage? As a society we are breaking, breaking under a pandemic, racism, gender inequality, targeted violence without consequences, ecological disaster, and more, yet there is a system in place that at best allows for minimal change.

There is value in keeping things from breaking, in keeping ourselves from breaking, but what would happen if we, to borrow words from this month’s contributor, Quinsy Gario, break when necessary, what if we break what is necessary to heal.

If that carefully packed suitcase would be dropped to shatter the porcelain within, how long would it take to piece each item together again? Would all the broken shards coalesce towards the centre like skin cells closing around a wound? Would I still be able to hold my grandmother when holding a porcelain shard with half a painted violet on it? What if the system broke under the pressure of the pain it inflicts?

Breaking is transformative. In zakia’s poems transformation is achieved through pleasure, through building new homes, through raising a finger to the patriarchy. The processes we have canonised and inherited are annotated and reevaluated. If we knew that healing followed breaking, would we allow ourselves to break? Would we make way for a new society by breaking this one?

Breaking is dangerous. Becoming rigid and still has protected me well. Healing feels like entering a process of un-repair. Yet here we are. The act of disassembling and reassembling cannot be achieved alone but through connection and collaboration. It is through packages of care, like this one, which was carefully curated to amplify and resonate the ideas crafted within. When we break the seal on the envelope, we take a shard into our hands, we feel, we mend.

Kind regards,

Anna