untitled I

Do we not each, in truth, create our own loneliness simply by leaving only ourselves alone? And does time not go on flowing after setting its tears down in a goblet of wine one night? An iftar table, a rakı table, the staff of Moses, my father’s barbecue tongs, and then the night-black wind that blows after the sun has set. Does the doctor deliver the news of the patient’s death, or is it the sweet wines of Anatolian women that wait for us? Ah, and those evenings of painless conversation. One day, I tell myself, I will gather myself up and leave—but that day does not come, and I cannot wait for the day that is to come. I cannot make yesterday, today, yesterday, and then today again without living them over and over in my head. They came all at once, to occupy; I surrendered the keys to my ugly body to a goblet, in a headquarters of death. Now I understand: there is neither night nor time on this cruel island of men. Perhaps there is wine and I am the one who is absent. Perhaps it is my arm they have broken, or else my faith. I am ill to myself, and to myself I am the nurse. The gallows awaiting me is none other than myself.