Broken telephone

 They don't teach you 

what to say 

to the person on

the other end of the line

calling at 3 a.m. 

with words she 

would rather not utter

and you 

would rather not listen.

Or what to do with the 

3 a.m. silence

after you hang up,

how to fill the hours

left before the sunrise,

to leave or not to leave bed,

to brew or not to brew

some coffee,

how to play on.

Never enough to write

Aşkim I've kept the letters.
I read them once a year.
Still wonder what to do
when the paper gets
too fragile to be handled,
when my mind gets
too weakened to remember.
I like to imagine you kept
your promise to never forget me
and I was on your mind
during the earthquake,
you touched a memory of us
and it helped you not to be afraid.
Was there enough time
to run to the kitchen and
get my heart from
the old coffee can
inside your cabinet?
Where have you hidden it
after that?

(This is a poem abou a deceased love. I revisit his memory every Valentine's, you remember him from this poem last year)

(Written for Karin's Sunday Mini-challenge over at the Imaginary Garden)

Comrades

They remind me I'm breakable.

That I had ten months of allergies and 

occasional fever because 

you and I had an argument once,

that I couldn't smile for weeks,

that I lost a language because

after you leaving

why would I ever speak again,
who would I talk to?

That I fell down twice and

sprained one foot at a time
in forty days last year,

because you're in town,

and it's just a matter of hours.
We attract each other, they say.
They fear for me, my comrades.

September

September keeps stealing
the people I love away from me.

There has been too much heat
and too little shade these days.

You find neighbors in their porches
talking politics and having lemonade.

We now plant people like trees.
They grow arms as long as branches

which still fail to touch the clouds
but make great hangers for hopes.

Bring the canary back into the house by nightfall.

- says your last note

forgiving the creature for it cannot sing.
This is the lesson you leave us.

Close to heart

My grandmother had a strategy
to remember anything -
she stashed things in her bra:

her ID card,
money,
shopping lists,

general notes,
bus tickets,
handkerchiefs,

a black and white photo of grandpa
in his wedding suit,
'what a rare man he was'. 

As I look for a safe place
to keep my favorite thought of you,
she comes back to my mind

gathering blackberries in the yard,
lost in conversations with the memory
of the man she loved always close to heart.

The boy who lived on the second floor

He would pull my hair,
run after me around the block
holding a caterpillar on a stick,
and call me stupid.

I would bite his arm,
spit on his head whenever he
walked under my window
and call him stupid.

We would throw spiny seed capsules

of the castor oil plants around
at each other all the time.

Until one Sunday morning
getting back from church,
he left a note under my door

which read (in horrible handwriting):
Will you be my girlfriend?
and I crossed the box under yes.


(Written for Susan's Midweek Motif over at The Poets United and Robert Lee Brewer's Wednesday prompt over at WD)

To Mr. Vatn in Trondheim

(image from my personal archive)

Dear Mr. Vatn
it's been seven years
you filled a bottle with
loneliness and assigned it
to the sea.

It's been 2,556 days
I, who live 265 miles
away from the coast,
am the keeper of
your abandon.

Dear Mr. Vatn
there are 2,375,444
inhabitants in my city
but I couldn't feel
more left out myself.

From my kitchen
after dinner,
before doing the dishes,
I send you my best wishes
and hope your life is good.

Dear Mr. Vatn
it's the year 2014 and
you are not on Facebook.
I hope you still
write letters.

(Written for Fireblossom Friday over at the Imaginary Garden.)

(This is an original letter from a bottle found on the Northeastern coast of Brazil during summer vacation in 2007.)

Meant for the fire

Gli adulti (the adults) were always having 

conversazioni di adulti (adult conversation) while 

we sat around them and played 

with the flames of the old oil lamps,

i bambini della mia famiglia (the children in my family): 

lost in long conversations

with the salamanders.

Se ti bruci, ti spacco la faccia (if you burn yourself, I'll break your face)! 

- a loving promise.

Lascia soli i capretti (leave the kids alone)!  

- a protective cry. 

Le donne della mia famiglia (the women in family)

were all too busy 

for the fire spirits.

But we danced together and
learned some beauty from them:

that we can bear any inferno (hell), 

that skin cannot be our only belief, 

that a great deal of self-awareness is contained in pain,

that we are born from a quite unique spark

e siamo fatti per il fuoco (and we are meant for the fire).
    

(Written for Susan's Midweek Motiff: In two or more languages, I'm having a bad moment with my mother tongue, that's why I chose to go my third language, Italian. This poem is also shared with The Imaginary Garden)

Valentines

You climb down
Mt. Nemrut every year
the night before Valentine's
to sleep in my drawer under
a bunch of old letters.

I nearly forget
what you sound like,
the years between us
have weakened our story
I rarely tell it now.

But we were words in vows once.
I had your chest,
you had my lap,
we made promises
we wanted to be able to keep.