A bar in Istanbul. Friends surrounding me, a glass at hand—empty, near closing time. During the hassle where everyone tries to figure out a way to get home, I grow distant. It is my last day here, but I don’t want to leave. Everything I have carefully grown in my life has their seeds here, but we are growing apart with every coming day. I am afraid. Of being alone.
I start walking back home. Not exactly sure where home is actually, now in a life fractured across countries, cities, and divided with an ocean. One inadvertently slips into a dreamlike state when one knows the streets of a city so well. The mind is able to wander somewhere else. In a simple–minded way, I am hoping that I will encounter her. With every corner I turn there is that unstoppable burst of excitement and anticipation that maybe, this corner is the one where she appears. The wave of energy withers away with every failed attempt, but stubbornly flowers again as if it didn’t fail me for a hundred times. Under the lights of the city, with the warming comfort of a bit of wine inside keeping me from shivering under the cold night, I walk downhill. Maybe I text her, I think to myself. For some reason it doesn’t feel right. Lacks in romance, how I feel right now needs another way of communication. A letter? Who even writes a letter? I would regret that tomorrow morning. She lives far away now. I remember her face clearly. Every detail memorized, buried deep. A flower shop that is closing nearby, a restaurant with a small roundtable with two chairs outside at the corner of the street. So many faces, too much sound. Reality sinks and memories flood in. I imagine us in these places; I want to tell her about the movie I watched yesterday and how I hated that it was so well written but so badly produced. The artist she recommended, I actually liked his second album more than the last one. In this field where imagination and memories meet, I miss her.
My friends tell me to download Tinder. “Aren’t there prettier girls where you go?” The concept scares me. To have the most perfect photos, seem like the most fun and most attractive and most lovely and most. Then getting erased and brushed off by one swipe? But no, I love things about her that I don’t like. Her breath smells of coffee (you guessed it, I hate coffee). She takes up too much blanket. She doesn’t give things time, loses interest a bit too fast. She always tells me to decide the movie, but we end up watching what she picks. She sometimes makes affection look like obsession and blames me for it. I love her.
When you can’t pinpoint a certain place, a house, a couple of your belongings, or a neighborhood as home, you resort to people. It is its own kind of pain. People told me that studying abroad would be full of sacrifices. Sleepless nights, not having warm food on the stove, jetlag, those I could bear. But no one told me what to do when you miss your home. Maybe I will put a couple posters up. The recipe my mom sent from WhatsApp could do the trick. But what turns it all into a home is love. What does all of it mean if you don’t have someone to share it with? I should call her. I look at the time, 12:17. That’s five in the morning where she is. Can’t do it. It doesn’t happen as often now, but when I lose my interest in Philadelphia, all the colors of the city start fading. Faces and names get mixed up, I grow distant. Too many strangers. Why can’t she be here, why can’t I be where she is? Why can’t I just think of something else and stop the idea from crawling back up to the surface? This language I write in feels strange, feels like a bouquet of random letters emptied out of any meaning. I hate her.
These thoughts carried me home, and now I am at the door. What to think of now? Of love or its absence? Maybe what to put in the luggage I need for tomorrow. Trying to focus on what is real now, those tickets are expensive. But, real? Oh, how I detest that word. So devoid of imagination. She is a dream for me. I live in that dream, and that dream lives in me. Life has thrown us into different corners of this world, and I can’t help but think of her while rummaging through all my stuff. The clothes spread across the bed and the floor blend into the walls of my room, a museum of the person I used to be. The boy who used to wake up in this bed everyday dreamed of her. I dream of her.
I want to tell her that even though we got separated, at distant places and times, I love her as much as the day I met her. FaceTime, movie watch party, anything to keep this garden alive. Perhaps, they are futile devices. I have an image of her burrowed in my mind of the time she took me to her favorite place, under a yellow light, to drink coffee. Her dark red nails, long hair, brown eyes, perfect smile. Can’t help the image spurning from within.
My love, my queen, my broken dreams come save me
Kiss me like the wind
Won’t you kiss me from within
