Author Archives: m*

i am talking to a wall. the wall is cracked, covered with chipped paint and mysterious indents. it has been standing there a while, waiting, aging. the wall is a shade of grey or blue, or grey-blue, the colour of clouds before a mid-week summer storm. if i look closely, i can see traces of fingertips left behind on the fractures. who left them there, the wall would not tell me. the wall says he does not remember how they got there, though it is hard for me to believe him when i know the wall has ears if not eyes, and the wall never forgot a single word i said.

i walk by the shells, and my feet turn black. the more i walk alongside them, the more dirt i gather. the soles of my feet are white, but the exposed surfaces are covered in soot. the streets leave a mark on my feet, and my skin shows the sign of time the way my muscles cannot. i am older to this city. i walk by the shells, and i hear the sound of my skin breaking as the second half of the course unfolds at my feet.

the page is blank, understandably so. all pages start blank, then end up filled with whatever you fill them with (water, sand, paper birds). sometimes the sentences make sense and bring purpose to our lives, sometimes they mean absolutely nothing at all. we find ourselves in one of those moments, where it could go either way, and i do not get to pick.

today is my birthday. i am thirty-three years old, symmetrically-bound. a song everyone has forgotten comes to mind. it is not even that good a song. these days i prefer alan, singing “on my own.”

happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday.

i want to wash my face, peel away layers of my skin. i do not particularly wish to be any younger or any older. i need to cut my nails, remove my dress. i need to close my eyes, pull on my lashes. i need to slip under, below; to sleep, to dream. i have seen no moon, but heard the cries of too many seagulls. they take a long time to retire in the night. they do not believe in dark hours, not with so many lights on. we know how it is. the salt in the air reminds us. we are not far behind, with our hair dry and brittle, eyes out to sea.

we sit under a spotlight. i wrap my legs around like a wry neck. (you gobble it up like a thief.) we mix up the notes like thunder, and the music rides on the coattails of our heartbeats. the sun shines, but we choose an artificial star when we cannot bear to burn our skin.

it is the death of june soon.

i do everything a little predictably, a little backwards. i close a parenthesis without opening one—that is how i take to my digressions. they can be half-moons in the sky keeping tabs on our promises. we laid them all there on the table between us, though sometimes it is hard to see anything at all.

when i am about to travel, i think back on earlier journeys.

exempli gratia, memories of nemrut dağı:

there is a gap in my notebook. nothing written for a few days. silence, because the room was too cold. silence, because we were always hungry. silence, though the toads croaked well into the night. when i discovered a giant locust on my leg, the spell was broken. we climbed with the wind in our faces. the sunset lay under thick clouds. it rained horizontally, but only at the top – and i went home with fortuna in my pocket, as luck would have it.

ıslak mendil var mı?

i see feet moving under the table and i think it is a cat. it could be a cat—we are outside, where cats roam freely, abundantly. i haven’t yet seen a cat in this courtyard though, too busy they are finding places to hide from the sun.

a group of women talk about their grandchildren. there is a lack of wind. we feel the air stick to our skin and form a second skin. we wait for a breeze to undress us, but nothing happens. the roses have dried, the leaves hardly move and the trees no longer bend. it is the beginning of a long, hot summer.

a thin sliver of silver wrapped around my wrist holds my veins captive.

coffee rings inside a cup tell of time and pauses, conversations and silences.

after a moment, we are ready to set out again.

at the sight of a man in the women’s restroom, a flustered incomer inquired about her whereabouts. the man pointed to the dirty stall in answer.

“that’s my wife,” he slurred. “that’s my wife. she’s in there.”

the newly appointed wife emerged, locks of black hair cupping her face, her eyesight blurred by kohl and smoke, glass-shard fingers tugging at her skirt.

“yes, this is the women’s restroom,” she told the bewildered woman, while the man repeated his slow midnight mantra, unending.

leaving room for the red-faced woman to pass, the chosen bride held her carouser-groom’s forearm and led him toward the exit.

that morning, she dreamt. she dreamt she was shot point blank and lay dying. as she cried with her hands on her wound, three words came out of her mouth. they were familiar words, deep-rooted. she learned to speak with them. they were never not known to her. in time, she came to carefully dismiss them—a necessary exercise in autonomy—but that morning in her dream, she could not silence her voice.

three words, three syllables.

that morning in her dream, she wailed and she uttered the words over and over again in spite of her, as if to say, you will die, but not without these words flooding your last breath; as if to say, you will die, but in your one final gasp, you will compensate for all the times you could not speak while you were living.

a contraction of sorts.

in the end, it was not clear what she saw. she kept her eyes open til she gave up the ghost, but it followed her straight to the grave.

and in all that we don’t say,
in all that’s in between.

seven years ago, in a life underwater.

half a bottle of wine on the first night. half a bottle of wine on the second night. a bottle of wine on the third night (hello, argentina!), and you are starving.

you cannot sleep without a seashell on your ear and a seahorse sigh down your throat. you think you can take away the hook from your gums but they are still digging at it, you are still starving, and stainless steel is your only aftertaste—trusty, and unequaled.