A bunch of letters were scattered across the porch floor. I gathered them and piled them on to the coffee table in the living room. They were damp from being on the cold tiles for too long. The room was dry; a layer of dust filled my nostrils with each breath I took. I should open a window. She opened the windows every day, even during the winter. I didn’t want any remnants of air she had breathed to escape the room, but the stale stench remained prominent, and I realised how much time had passed. I couldn’t open the window, so I continued to the kitchen.
Phantom scents lingered in the kitchen from years of cooking freshly ground coffee and burning essential oils. Rose, orange blossom, and lavender were her favourites. These were soon overpowered by the odour of unwashed dishes and dirty laundry though.
Occasionally I’d make Turkish coffee and find her in the conservatory listening to the rain against the roof. We’d sit and read each other’s fortunes from the coffee grounds as per tradition. I haven’t made any Turkish coffee since. I couldn’t bring myself to drink any kind of coffee for weeks after because the smell reminded me of her.
In the conservatory, five aloe vera plants lined the windowsill. She had bought four of them cheaply because they were dying. They were thriving now in their new pots. The smaller fifth one, a gift from me, drooped and the ends of the leaves shrivelled. I decided to take them home with me and repot the fifth one.
I emptied a plastic laundry basket onto the kitchen floor and carefully placed the aloes inside. I grabbed a half empty canister of ‘Mehmet Efendi Turkish Coffee’ and a dusky-pink cardigan from the laundry pile and laid them in the basket beside the plants.
I couldn’t bring myself to go upstairs. I’ll come back tomorrow, I thought, as I opened the window, basket in hand. When I left the house, the breeze carried the smell of coffee.
Mermaid with a Silver Tear Necklace
We sit in a small wooden rowing boat; one oar in your hand, the other in mine. It’s golden hour and the river plays with light, sparkling. We row steadily as the sun sinks, shading the sky with pink highlighter on its way down. You begin rowing frantically to the left side of the riverbank where a cluster of wildflowers has caught your eye. Desperate to pluck a bunch, you unbalance the boat and my oar slips through the reflection of the sky into the depths of the river, dissolving. Your entire upper body bridges the gap between our boat and the wildflowers you’ve grabbed with your left hand. As the boat slightly tilts I hurriedly reach out to you but you slip. I crawl to the very edge, our hands outstretch, fingers briskly graze. I’m sliding downstream, and the wind blows your hair in your face. Furrowed eyebrows and glassy eyes silently stare apologetically at me before they sink into the glimmering hot pink sky like my oar. I slip on the wildflowers you discarded on the edge of the boat, fall back and hit my head. The raw pink ink blotches in the sky are absorbed by cotton wool and just as it turns to candy floss, two giant hands cover my eyes from either side, devoured by darkness. When I wake, there is the moon, round and shining like a great big antique mirror. It points to you beneath the water; a new scaly creature who now speaks a tongue I don’t understand. So you swim away with your extravagant silver tail because we can’t even say goodbye. A single tear glides down my cheek, captures the moonlight and plummets into the water. I watch as the ripples expand, subtly fading into nothingness.
Shapeshifter
A young orphan girl found she could transform;
A beggar and a hunter she’d become.
To new configurations, she’d conform;
To wolf and pretty girls, she would succumb.
Cloaked in the skin of pretty girls, begging,
Catching the pitied hearts of passersby.
Other days she spent in the woods hunting;
As a wolf sometimes she’d let herself cry.
And then one day all magic disappeared.
Alas, she was confined, a wolf drifter.
She forgot her true form, just as she feared
So goes the tale of the lone shapeshifter.
In an attempt to save herself she learned
Once you’ve lost yourself you can’t be returned.
Phoenix
Amethyst, ruby
and gold accented feathers.
Slight, extravagant;
a bird of countless past selves.
Now was time for another.
Phoenix was its name
and when it went insane, would
erupt into flame;
rise from the ashes anew.
“Which is me?” All of them are.
Puppetmaster
Like a puppeteer,
he knows exactly where to
pull. And I dance on.
Whitewash
Sometimes I see you through the cracks
of the white paint they’ve covered you in.
I wish I could peel away
your second skin and look under.
I wish I could see what you look like beneath;
see your secret.
I’d like to take you to the bathhouse
and wash it all away;
scrub you clean until you are free of
all this white-wash.
Until you are shining bright with
all the colour they have
imprisoned within you for so long.
I wish you would let flowers grow again
and your aroma would fill the air
rather than this constant stench of
fresh white paint.
(I wrote this poem over a year ago for a zine, however the zine didn’t work out as a whole so I am sharing it for the first time here. I say this because my writing style has changed slightly since I wrote this poem.)
Forget-me-not
She was a forget-
me-not hanging in a glass
vial around his neck.
Rosebush
He stretched his hand out,
reaching in admiration.
His hands bled. Pink, red.
Wild Thing
A tiger swallowed
a key. She wanted to be
free. How? It’s inside.
A Bartering Fool
Eyes under heavy hood.
He looks you in the eye. Warned.
Will you try to run?
Play a game of chess?
Whoever wins the bet, will
still not escape Death.
(A double haiku)
Y.B. 