time and the pull towards the pavement;

always you forget to remember to wait. always you remember after you have already forgotten. remembrance of the wicked, memories of the sullen. always short-fused, quick-tempered, out of reach, controlling neither the comings nor the goings of your breath, just extending—pushing, pulling, pushing, pulling, testing the boundaries of elasticity, wondering when the latch will give out, whether this is even a test of patience.

your hands move on the clock towers of your arms. three marks upon your skin call for nails slightly sharper than usual. you scratch as if to rouse your mind, which has spent days, weeks, and months in a whirlwind or a haze. you look at the reflections in the window, shapeshifters and shadows from the tender nook of the illuminated, moving to the noise of the men, all men. never have you been so keenly aware of a woman’s spoon grazing the side of a pot.

the strangeness that becomes of you neither inhales nor exhales.

it is the not knowing where to get your coffee beforehand, so you drink tea instead.

distance;

note to self

dearest m*,

please return to robert walser’s the walk story, which you have not finished. you are currently at page 58, whereupon you will jump to the next available story. as you know, you need not read a book in a linear manner—you can read however you please (thank you, daniel pennac).

may you wander around and about until when or if you come back to where you have left.

the eyes cover a distance
of a thousand horizons.

unwittingly,
& always yours.

 

zor ve kolay;

it seemed like all there was only preparation, from the moment the decision was made until the moment i picked up my black cat from baggage claim in istanbul atatürk airport. (there he was, sitting in his carrier unattended, dropped off like a lost parcel in the middle of the bustling space.) who knows how he made it across the atlantic; it seemed like the time would never come, for neither of us. yet he made it here the same way i did: with presence and patience as the only footing. now we sit on this couch, my black cat and i, in the other-other world, where another form of otherness awaits.

and so it was, and so it is.

and so it begins where it ends.