AND OTHER HOMELY HAUNTOLOGIES

By Salamis Aysegul Sentug-Tugyan

all of a sudden, I remember I forgot to take something:

something I should carry with me all the time to confirm who I say I am.

not having the thing I should carry with me at all times to confirm who I say I am finds me at fifteen past six, staring at a goat, on top of an olive tree holding the sunrise.

the sun rising over the tree holding the goat leads to my decision to go back home.

and going back home always takes longer than walking away from home.

walking back home finds me thinking about standing on the importunate grounds between the living and dead, yet being closer to the latter,

like the olive-picking women I just pass,

or like the red fish in the net of the men grasping the moment before their last moment,

holding the power to end their in-betweenness of all kinds under this orange-blue sky. 

arriving home, I find myself in awe upon noticing an empty snail exoskeleton on the door,

a creature with whom I now share an absence of something.

I hold its uninhabited shell, its past, its lost future, the frugal life matter, within my hands.

for this moment, the threshold we share is no more, my eagerness to move, quenched forever.

every time I arrive home, I find some parts of it have died, if not altogether,

or some parts of me alive yet unattached to its shell, if not altogether.

and I repeat.

#darkpoetsclub