fog over the city. fog over istanbul.

you cannot fly in the sky because you cannot see the sky.

how do birds cope? do they pause, equating thickness with silence and death?

cutting through the air with a knife, red river.

(i)

i do not know why i am looking at you. it is not a pleasure, it is not particular. it is just a necessary curiosity, a flipping through pages, a wondering though there is nothing to think about. i will never run into you. i will never see you beyond that which you share on the outskirts of your world: a trail waiting to be followed, a trail leading nowhere — no traps, not even an end, dead or otherwise. it is a common affliction, this curio-quest. observational anti-therapy. memory withdrawal. the art of looking awry, changing shapes, disfiguring. you will be forgotten the moment eyes shift or close. there is no object permanence here.

(ii)

display, dialogue, process, parody. next. thirteen lines, twelve words.

(iii)

i once knew someone, the way we all know someone, at some point in time. whenever this person laughed, i did not understand; it bewildered me. his laughter was entirely foreign to me. this surprised me as i have an easy laugh; i find humour in the uncommon, the laborious, the inane. i told myself that strangers are only strange until you get to know them. i therefore went on a quest to prove myself right, and i became acquainted with him. sadly, from that point forward, whenever he laughed, i wanted to cry. this may be why i only once knew him, and know him not still.

he pulls something from my face.

“tek or çift,” he says.

“tek,” i say.

it’s always a single eyelash, and tek is always the correct answer. the truth is that i saw it in the mirror earlier, but i was too unconcerned to remove it. perhaps i was hoping i would be granted a wish.

“make a wish,” he says.

i make my default wish, then stumble and wish another wish upon it, while another wish tread quietly underneath it.

“what did you wish for?”

i explain my messy three-layered wish. he looks at me with a curious look.

“that doesn’t count,” he says. “what was your main wish?”

“the same wish i’ve been wishing for since i was a little girl.”

my default wish overrides all other wishes. it is mechanical, automatic. it is akin to prayers, incantations. other wishes cannot be thought of and spoken before this one takes hold. it is the traditional bully wish; there is no point in wishing for anything else.

“it’ll come true,” he says.

i’m not sure i believe him.

journée grise et lente. impossible de dire s’il pleut ou pas; la pluie est un songe imprévisible avant le réveil et elle va et vient comme elle le veut.

the rain, la pluie, i avoided her most of the day. staying in where the air is warm and comforting, where the words come easily and without judgement. i would rather be here than be there, although i haven’t quite figured out where i should not be. it’s just so beautiful here. beautiful, and easy, despite the strangeness in the heart that wavers like an old wound and its scent, permanently linked, absorbed and unbearable.

you stole a tulip last night on your way home. there are tulips everywhere. in a raki-infused dream you sought to make one your own and plucked it clumsily from the soil where it mingled with her sisters. you took the tulip home and gave her her own tea glasshouse. sitting on lydia, she bloomed full strength, never minding that it was well after midnight. this morning she greeted you with her coral lines and gentle breath. i don’t know what she makes of her new sights, and i don’t know how long she will be among us. the kidnapping was selfish and swift—an impulse in the night. what can you do? i love tulips at night too.

quelques minutes avant la fin de la journée. comme le temps fuit. c’est peu dire. on ne sait pas s’y attarder, ni à la fuite, ni au temps qui la suit. on laisse passer. on ouvre la porte, on cède la route à défaut de savoir comment capturer, prolonger ou articuler autrement.

j’ai cette douleur dans le bas du dos. hier, c’était ma gorge. l’autre jour, mon coeur, ma tête, ma peau, mon nez. je suis constamment consciente de mes maux et des mouvements de mon corps. même lorsque tout va bien, il y a habituellement quelque chose. l’hypersensibilité généralisée, l’âme et les os.

porter attention à certaines choses et non pas à toutes les choses;
filtrer, réduire. perdre le souffle. se reprendre, s’entendre.

un ajustement perpétuel des sens et des sensations.

meanwhile —

i do love this table. i do love the rug underneath it. i do love the bookshelf that overlooks them. i love the floors, the ceiling, the ghostly curtain dresses flowing from top to bottom.  i love the wide windows and the view: the decrepit building, the car wash, the german shepherd with his lanky legs and wagging tail. i love the tramway as it heads down the road, the way it makes the entire room shake like a million souls trembling. i love the cackling of the crows and seagulls, my black cat sunbathing in the sun’s generous rays, the possibility that this place reminds me of a memory not yet created.

only we are not really playing.

on my ring, i can tell where the old diamond was. it fell some time in december, perhaps tempted by other, better grounds—ones not confined by the movements of my finger. now it lives on in the company of lost things. i can tell where the old diamond was, and where the new diamond is. there is a slight imperfection that does not escape the eye, the flicker of a dent, an exchange or a passage. when i look down at my ring, i know. i see it.

the other day, a young woman in class looked at my exposed arm, inspected the curves in the ink.

“what does it mean?”

it means what it means, i told her, though not in those words.

she fixated on the gap. “aren’t you scared that it might bring you bad luck?”

i looked down at my arm, grazed the line with my finger, circling, then stopping.

the gap stands out, the same way a four-leaf clover would stand out in a field of green.

i know. i see it. it is neither a gift nor an affliction.

when you learn a new language in a new country, the most common questions people ask you are: what were you doing then? what are you doing now? what will you be doing next? it is a good way to ensure that you grasp the elemental verb tenses, but it can get quite tiring (and somewhat dispiriting) to reduce your life to three short replies, in a vocabulary still limited by your own progress. & so you write about the birds instead. the extraordinary birds you identified as a child through a well-worn ornithology book; the flock of black and white swifts cutting the sky in half in ankara; the painting of a bird paradise at night.

in all the birds the reminder of the earth —
where you were, where you are, where you will be.

(bonne année / happy new year / mutlu yillar.)

per aspera ad astra —

in turkish the way one says “nevermind” translates literally to “give nothing”—boş ver.

i cannot think of an ending to this year, as my year ended in september, with the autumn-spring. the past four months have hardly existed in a way that is possible for me convey linearly; they have happened and are happening, they have overwhelmed and are overwhelming. when i close my eyes moments burst in and out like pulsars. i see palm trees in december, but i do not see snow. i see grown men picking up puppies by one hand and checkers boards by the other, a dark apartment made even darker by the rain, cats huddling for warmth under crisp air. the suns set all too soon, but i sleep with the bears.

“it’s good to leave each day behind,
like flowing water, free of sadness.
yesterday is gone and its tale told.
today new seeds are growing.”

— rumi