by Yeşim Özsoy, translated from Turkish by Buğra Giritlioğlu (with the help of Daniel Scher)
i’m swimming in a sea charged with silence.
unaware of the sediments in my body,
imagining i’ll reach some place,
in the certitude of a sea’s vast body which cannot be boxed up and shrunk,
in a sea, forever bereft of color,
with my small dream boxes, never concealed,
i miss the boundlessness of a dream.
i succumbed and shrank as tiny ants
writhing before a wild wind,
in a sea’s colorless, silent comfort
with a longing for nothing but love and in return for pagefuls of tears
i sold my boxes.
with the shame of not knowing, not wanting to know,
i spewed all my boxes into a sea’s colorlessness.
if i could change it,
give it color with my thirst,
reaching for the mussel on the sea floor
in a real silence,
bathed in a color different than this,
far away from any certitude,
i would not even imagine returning to breathe…
