Ice Cold Istanbul

Your nerves are clinging to one another; As new connections are being made, I can feel being named.

The way they took my feminine identity, carried it carelessly on their fingertips, balanced but not so; overtime, over-days.

I would like an answer now that I’ve seen about it; the worsening of cancer.

You as the possessor of a single tool beneath your thighs,

how can it be enough to make me yours the moment I opened my eyes to this ice cold Istanbul.

December 2002 when I was forced out to –
Cold Middle Eastern winter blowing the hats of the know-it-all possessers too early to name me; too petite–not going to make it.
when I did, they counted me as indeed,
cannot be steddied.
Some nights exist in me where I wish I had not made it.

My country was crying;
Women all over pleading to be seen–
Widened shoulders, hell bent never to get bent down again–
to be seen as the human that they were.

If you had a piece of elongated tissue sticking loosely out at the base of your pelvis,
then congrats you’ve made it into the set-and-stone hierarchy; one that I’ve witnessed of it

the immobility, the transparency

My country was shouting;
Women all over pressing their bleeding fists on the gender barricades contrived.
My twin brother who loved resting his back on a sunny Sunday morning,
never minded to ask about my bruised knuckles when we posed for graduation.
Never minded how we lived through sixteen years side to side but a million years apart.

Oh the stubborn women of my country
Fluttering against systems of nerve connections frozen in time.

Oh will you ever notice– pointless fluttering is what chics are only capable of.
The naming then the taming

A weave your fingertips memorized every inch of
The forging then the purging,

to be of their desire until the very end of time.