Author Archives: m*

on the day before her birthday, she came home with a large bouquet of flowers. i was mesmerised by the purples and the greens, but her face was sour. she placed the flowers hurriedly and without much care in a mason jar on the kitchen island. she hated who had sent them, she hated what they represented, and no sooner had the sun disappeared she opened the front door and threw them onto the street. the flowers rose and fell. i stood by the window and looked at them in the dark, their colours muted against the pavement.

on the night before her birthday, she left, but not without kissing me repeatedly on the forehead. her lips were quick and effective, and her fragrance lingered on me. she came home much, much later, in the in-between hours. she stumbled in like a row of russian dolls falling on one another. she removed her clothes one piece at a time, leaving a trail behind until she felt furthest removed from the night. she lay on the bathroom tiles, cold porcelain near. there, she clutched a phone against her cheek, alternating between two numbers. there, she fell asleep with the lights on, on the white carpet that had turned grey over the years.

the two women were curious about anatomy—most notably their own. they had similar bodies, though not quite the same, and they sometimes wondered why pieces of clothing fell certain ways on one body but not on the other. the two women also loved alphabet soup, which was their idea of an exhilarating distraction, an occasional indulgence. they often popped a few letters in their mouths, and compared their bodies in the full-length mirror, late into the night.

***

between themselves, the two women knew four languages. they knew the languages to varying degrees—it was a delicate equilibrium. one excelled in a language more than the other; the other mastered a language the other could only read; and sometimes, as one dove deeper into a language, the other slowly drifted away from it.

this allowed them to speak in tongues.

one evening, one of them hosted a party.

the other woman asked her:

“are you happy?”

she looked around the room, and then at her.

“what does ‘happy’ mean?”

***

the two women were on the northbound bus. they were off to dinner at a james bond-themed restaurant. neither women were familiar with james bond beyond his well-known self-affirming line, nor had they any idea what a restaurant in his honour entailed. it was an excuse to get out of the house.

on the northbound bus, the two women sat and discussed various matters of the anatomy, of the heart.

a man and his date got on and stood by the exit door. the man looked like a young boy—pale, white skin; soft, dark curls—, while his date looked like an old lady—furrowed brow, parenthetical mouth, hair limp and thin. one of the two women recognised the man. she wrote it down on a small piece of paper, and handed it to the other.

i know him. i went to his apartment many moons ago. he had a book on the art of war in his bathroom. he is a kafa doktoru.

she underlined the last two words, for good measure. the other woman nodded. she had not yet met him, but she would, soon—they were all headed to the same james bond-themed restaurant, and the three of them would share a cigarette on the patio while the man’s date picked at the brackets around her mouth.

off it goes.

***

le temps, la lumière; toujours ce rappel de l’éphémère, de ton corps qui se métamorphose lentement en un autre corps. ce corps ne te sera jamais étranger, puisque tu t’y familiarises au fur et à mesure qu’il se transforme. tu aimerais parfois te retirer de ta matière et t’observer changer, en retrait. après un certain temps, tu rapatrierais tes formes en y glissant ton esprit comme dans un gant neuf. tu manierais ta peau afin de l’attendrir, puis tu épouserais les tréfonds, sans doute, avec cette complicité qu’ont les étrangers heurtés d’un coup de foudre.

j’aurais pu rester longtemps à paris à ne rien faire, mais il faut souvent partir (et partir souvent).

***

je n’aime pas avoir froid, comme ça, le matin. je dors dans une robe noire; je me réveille et me couvre de laine, de cotton; mes cheveux tombent sur ma nuque et me réchauffent. dans mon oreille droite qui grésille j’entends mon corps qui tente de se délester de ce malaise, mais je suis fais de glace et je peine à fondre.

you’re just not leaving me enough time to catch up with you, sun.

i don’t know who you are.

i don’t know why i picked you up.

i don’t know why i paid 1TL for you, and i why i keep you in a pile of other found photos.

i will not write a story about you. i will not discuss the knee-high socks, the chair, the round faces, the white collars, the painted nails, the time on the watch. i will not tell you to take a look at the vase and the silk flowers, the porcelain pieces, the encyclopedias, the leather strap around the ankle, the 1955 inscribed in black ink in the top right corner. i will not speculate about the father, so clearly missing, and i will not mention the black dress and the wedding ring.

november lost in little glass jars, sprouting words and things.

***

as with every other girl from her generation, she owned a small pink jewellery box. the outside was covered in soft, faux velvet; the inside was cushioned in soft, faux satin. when she opened it, a dainty ballerina spun on herself—a pirouette, in fourth position—, to a familiar music box melody. there was a minuscule, oval mirror behind her, and as she danced it seemed as though she was only dancing for herself. eventually, the music stopped playing and the ballerina lost her will to twirl.

the girl never kept any jewellery there, for she was just a child, and the jewellery she wore was on her at all times: delicate hoops with turquoise stones; a thin, perpetually tangled gold chain; copper barrettes. in her jewellery box, she only kept a perry ellis perfume sample she had torn out of a magazine. she rubbed it on her green wool sweater and her wrists frenetically before she went outside, eager to please one clueless boy.

she doesn’t remember when she got the jewellery box or when she lost it. it was one of those things that were a part of her childhood, until she was no longer a child and it was no longer a part of her. as she grew older, few things followed her around—a panda bear with a glued-on nose, a pierrot journal that no longer locked, paintings and drawings her mother had stuffed into a worn-out box.

it is hard not to eavesdrop on neighbouring conversations. the ear is tuned to seek patterns. once you learn a language, you cannot unlearn it. you go from noise to words, to gist to full sentences. suddenly the hum is no longer humming, the buzz is no longer buzzing, and you can no longer turn off the people around you.

***

“i’m sorry,” the woman said, peering deep inside the other woman’s body.

“it’s okay,” the other woman replied.

when a little piece of you is removed, she thought, you cannot follow that piece; you can only hope that it will be looked at carefully, with eyes that you yourself do not possess.

the older couple is telling the younger woman how they met.

they met in michigan. before they met, he had already planned to move to new york or california. she hoped he would pick new york. (“please pick new york, please pick new york.”) it didn’t really matter to him, though he preferred manhattan. (“it’s changed since.”)

they got engaged on christmas morning 1978 over the phone. (“it sort of just happened.”) his mother got all choked up when he announced it over christmas dinner. they got married in march 1979. it was a simple, do-it-yourself wedding. there was a blizzard. it had been a cold winter.

they rented a u-haul not long after and moved to upstate new york. he had found a studio apartment walking around in a neighbourhood that he liked. it was cheap. (“so cheap.”) they lived there for six to eight months, until they got their own place. that’s when they became demolition experts. (“that’s when we became demolition experts.”)

the younger woman nods agreeably.

do you have any friends there?

i do, i say, as if people need to be reassured, as if people cannot cope with the idea of my solitude, as if the question wasn’t revealing their own fears of distance and seclusion.