Seda Karıncaoğlu: I was born in Adana, 1984. I am a student at the last grade in Anadolu Openeducation Faculty, Sociology department. I protect my inner world from the rigid reality outside by writing poetry and stories, and sometimes get a chance to face that reality too. So long as letters and notes exist I believe we can reach places that seem as far as unreachable.
Colour to Ashes
Translated with the author’s approval by Ege Dündar
Wherever we go sorrow follows
To polish life, it seems one must scrub with ashes!
Welcome I say every time you come to mind
Because sometimes
I am dying,
From the crushing kicks of the life
I couldn’t bare giving birth to.
If I found a hand
To draw on my head a window for breathing through
To let a single colour seep onto my darkness
When I, leaning against the wall
Had turned my face to death…
You come to mind then
I straighten up and rescue myself from the claws of my own hands
Sometimes when I wake in the morning and find your face in the mirror
I wash my face, while repeating my name like an apology
I know not how else to make amends with you
However many stories have a start
That’s how absent I was
When every story took on
A beginning far away from me
And when mostly hollowed meanings fell short for me
I became a marginal chipher…
I watched those passing by
Those paused to rest
I met many heroes
And many cowards too…
They all touched my life exactly at the point I expected it.
I waited…
Ashamed to name all this time a life
With a suitcase I stuffed separations in
I waited…
As I came to accept being disguised in various adjectives
I had a place among them
I can even say I was loved
I had lovers and love affairs/romance
And those that when I refused being disguised in various adjectives
Who pitied me and whom I pitied on
My escape at long last, to my own nothingness;
The priceless peace of my lonelinesses.
With the fulfilment of just being me
To leave unharmed from endued societal values
To be able to exist despite generalised moral judgements
Was to stain colour with ashes…
I traversed through whatever there is about life,
I nurtured and destroyed it within.
To leave the last step immune from contextual concerns
I was going to push everything off my own cliff
To be finished myself…
If I hadn’t felt you in my heart again
I would assume being single in this life full with puss-in-the corner
Was to be complete.
Every time you come to mind
I say welcome smiling gently
When I remember you
In an unscathed story and being me was enough
One more corner I left behind
Is taken already…
I smile,
A black spot in my heart aching…
Inside I fold into that familiar darkness
Like harking back to a friend of old…
If I found a hand
To draw on my head a window for breathing through
To let a single colour seep onto my darkness
When I, leaning against the wall
Had turned my face to death…
When I think of you…I shush.
At last it’s the two of us who remain
And the priceless peace of our loneliness.
We grew up in such a brief lifetime
Flashing on and off time after time
This memorised life resembles the curse of being born over and over again
Back at the start every time we thwart…
I set ablaze yet again all the adjectives dressed onto me
You that says ‘leave my ashes once more for later’ to my side
I can’t say don’t be afraid but I smile…
Now we are a suitcase full of contradictions, the two of us
A voyage of beginnings with its colour falling into ashes.