Author Archives: m*

mornings when you haven’t left the halos of the night.

i wrongly believe that there should be an ease to learning this language because it is, presumably, in my blood. yet a genetic heritage does not in any way grant me preferential treatment. memories of youth spent by the water with an esmer kız painting my nails in gunky coats of red might have a better chance at improving my abilities to agglutinate. this blood means nothing but that i cannot stand the cold.

***

there are two women in the opposite building across the courtyard. the first draws the curtains in a hurry, blocking the sun. the second applies make-up by the glass door, where the light hits her features with a glow.

i look at my fingers. i am not using them as i normally would. my fingers press upon squares when they should draw symbols instead. there was a time when i used to do this in a daze, eyes half-closed in the darkness with a cigarette burning alongside an incense stick. now we celebrate three years of mirrors to offset a habit that no longer exists.

i move my fingers to the right where i find a velvet pouch i haven’t seen in a while. i remember the cards. i shuffle through the deck and pick one at random. i slide it out, my eyes on the courtyard where the women used to be. i flip it over. the magician. the magician with a lemniscate above his head, a fountain pen in his right hand, a pocket watch, a jar, and a pistol before him.

i cast away the words. i offer melodies to our wires as they intertwine and test our patience. this place is not for us, we know. yet here we are, where the tree has lost its leaves in the cold, where the sun still fools us into summoning better days.

my mouth is a field and i have taken you hostage. you are the seed in my mouth. i have bitten into your coat, but not into you. instead of spitting you out, i let you float about like a mint. you have no taste, but i learn from your texture. you have modest curves, small indents and a fragile tip that i poke with my tongue as i hold you between my teeth. i can tell which colour you are, though i cannot see you. you are diminutive, but your skin is tough, and i would never torture you. i wonder if you miss your shell, i wonder if you are cold, i wonder if i am warm enough. could you grow in the hollows of my gums? could you sprout vines on my palate? do you find comfort twirling without aim, or would you prefer the balance of the earth? i do not know how long i will keep you in my mouth; you are a guest, but also a prisoner. at some point you will have done your time, you will lose your compass, and i will bid you farewell with a spit, or a swallow.

when your mouth emits that one singular sound—continuous, smooth, infallible—and you have to steady yourself on the next available structure, or the curtain.

***

a grandmother told me that she sometimes got dizzy, so much so that she could not walk, and that it got worse when her sleep was disturbed. lately her sleep had been disturbed because the upstairs neighbour’s cat woke her up in the middle of the night during the witching hour. despite knocking on the neighbour’s ceiling with a broom, the neighbour did not seem to understand that the grandmother needed to rest, that without proper rest she would get dizzy and would not be able to walk.

the grandmother had a granddaughter, and her daughter had recently given birth to a boy—a brother to the grandmother’s granddaughter. the grandmother’s daughter breastfed the baby, and was dependent on the baby’s nursing schedule, not unlike the grandmother and the neighbour’s cat. while the grandmother did not have a child safety seat in her car, she loved to bring her granddaughter to the botanical gardens, but only when she was well-rested, which she was not much at all lately. she had decided that she was going to the régie du logement that afternoon to settle this matter once and for all. she told me that the neighbour’s cat would not get in the way of her and her granddaughter’s love of the botanical gardens.

i have ten minutes to write before i must make my way out of the door. ten minutes, or six hundred seconds. i am not running out of breath. the air still hangs around me, though the more i write, the less time there is. by the time i will be done writing this, the clock will have ticked and then stopped. by the time this letter is sealed off and buried in the back of a drawer, i will be out of the door and onto the streets of chalcedon.

“chalcedon.”

chalcedon with its 9°C weather, winds north at 11 km/h, 81% humidity.

i will walk on the quieter streets until i have no choice but to walk on the busy streets. on the busy streets i will long for the quieter ones with a nostalgia that hasn’t yet matured. i wonder if i should offer my minutes to the impending sentimentality, a gift of time to fester, a preemptive measure. by then i will be where i am supposed to be at that given moment, away from this letter, a little further apart from you. if i am not there then surely an exceptional change in direction will be to blame, though sudden gusts of wind aren’t expected in this weather.

the tramway rides down the street and our table trembles a bit. i am reminded in this vibration that this year is just a continuation of the last. i bite my nail and gently rip the polish off. my nail is still there underneath. i do not know what new years bring nor what past years leave behind. expose anything to heat and watch magic happen. my eyes are heavy and full of tricks. we’ll tell each other stories.

it was winter, several years ago, as the year came to an end. we had a sudden hunger for spices, and we sought to satiate it. when we walked down the stairs to the restaurant, we saw a woman sitting by herself at a small table under a window. we were told her name, and it slipped on our tongues—the circle of birth, life and death disclosed in three simple syllables. we knew it wasn’t her given name, but we were here, she was there, and our fortunes lay between us. we decided that she read them.

i went first. i struggled to remove my necklace and slid it on to her. she held it in her hands and asked me if i mingled with energies. she saw my spirit guides around us, watchful and protective. she spoke of loves, of aches, of changes in paths. my fortune tends to shift with every move of the cup, with the coffee ground, the warmth of the alloys, and my ability to smile. i feared that my ennui, sehnsucht, spleen or existential angst would come to light, and i cut open my chest as an apology. she told me not to worry, that i was exceptionally safe. i listened and gave her the benefit of the doubt; she and i shared something between the silver of my necklace, even if it meant nothing.

you went next, while i waited in the afterglow of my rhymes. when you came back, you were overwhelmingly still, with pupils cimmerian in your chestnut eyes. you didn’t explain what had happened, and i didn’t push the matter—i couldn’t reconcile myself with humanity if i didn’t believe part of our nature could be explained by some form of inner torment or secret. i felt guilty for my reading, treacherous even, that you were not included in it. you should have been there, i know. how desperately you longed to be a part of it. i felt sorry that i couldn’t include you, though i was quietly relieved by the thought of a future with no holds barred. there was no denying the power of my walls, and you always stood in the trenches.

we left the restaurant that night, you and i, with burning mouths stinging in silence between our lots. someone had to see it.

she saw the back of his head everywhere that day. she also saw his face, his eyebrows, his nose, the shape of his forehead, his head of hair. she saw how he walked in the fish market through a man’s demeanour. she saw his arms in the way another held up a newspaper. his skin could’ve been this skin as it lay flat against the wobbly table, with tea trembling against the glass. he shared features with the entire world; he was reflected in a small spoon, he tasted nothing like sugar cubes.

she didn’t know what he wanted from her that day. she hadn’t asked and wouldn’t beg the sky for an answer. it was likely the first time in a long time that he had knowingly sat down and called her to mind (or rather stewed, mulled over, cooked these thoughts in a pot of boiling water)—until his attention had somehow reached her, through that trusty metaphysical motion of ideation.

every time she saw him everywhere that day, she was startled, then vaguely relieved. she knew he still existed somewhere in the universe, and even though he was long gone, she conceded that she hadn’t properly mourned him. she hadn’t had the chance; she saw him flee from the rain, only to get caught under the hail. he could never follow through with the transaction. she was waiting to be given the satisfaction of his regret. sometimes it is the only way to accelerate the mourning process. she was waiting for this, still. it took a certain willingness to admit it.

that day, she saw him in the way that we mistake our shadows for ghosts. she thought of the memories she didn’t keep; she thought of the ones she would never forget. she wished she had stopped to consider what hadn’t happened. we devise our lives through the unknown—these moments, this past, they were never more than what they were. she regretted knowing that she would never remember anything from what she had already forgotten.

here or there,
i’ll hang a garland on your tree.

there is a line of black on the arm. it isn’t a scar, it is ink. everything is imperfect—the missing letter in your name; the lone pomegranate seed on the living room carpet; the dust behind the dust that was removed; my many hands casting shadows against the wall; the artificial sleep that tires more than it restores. this house isn’t ours. nothing is really ours, though nothing is ever lost.

the sun is setting behind rooftops. we talk about the sky before we talk about what’s underneath. the sky is low, in shades of purple and dusty pink. i am telling you about the sky so i can tell you about my womb, and how deeply it aches. my womb is in a state of unrest. the blood perpetually implodes within me. the lining deteriorates, sheds itself, and falls through, like grains in an hourglass slipping by, one after the other.

we are the colour of the sky and as wide as its expanse. i am your heart and you are my ceiling. we are as deep as the sky and never without stars. we are as far as the sun and never without a well. one star looks out from the sky and through the window. it flickers and is dead, only we do not know that. the star has been there for as long as we can remember, but it has already abandoned us.

under the sky, we listen to the humming in my womb as it bears witness to the memory of unsettled energy.

under the sky, we think twice and we linger, in the deep.

i let the water run as i lay flat on my back in a tub that still smells slightly of bleach. i am merging with the porcelain in lieu of the soil and meeting the roots of all the flowers i cannot own. this ritual is so much more than watching my fingertips shrivel up, more than this conscientious cleansing of every nook and crease, more than the way the water feels between my toes as i sift through the letters. i have never refused to walk; this is an unmoored inclination.

i acknowledge every tile and every crack as distinct and charming entities, each with their own story. always they welcome me back by way of a make-believe tea party. i sink in without a doubt; my head lingers in a daze as i hold my breath, my face covered by sheaths and eyelids. i break the silence with a sigh, and my voice resonates as i sing along in remembrance. while there would be no soil waiting for me if i fell through the ground, there would likely be the neighbour there—an old man quiet in an old man’s way, tending to his flowers, never surprised.

oh mary of silence
you break my heart with a smile

this is not a pause-resume situation, evidently. everything has changed—who you were then, who you are now, who you will be. all these versions of you cohabit as you drift in and out of the elements. there is no predicting. you will make do when you surface again, in a wistful song or among the flowers.