This life should stop.
So should begin another,

Viler and downy, yet,
To forget the unforgiving

Past and to start anew
With the old regrets

And remnants of dainty
Memories not gotten yet;

The soft tune playing
On the counter, to recall

The sky that enveloped us.
That day when you

Were getting ready to
Say goodbye, not to me

But to my ghost,
Occupying no space

And no present future,
I had left the space

Long ago to cease
A diamond shell

Pertaining to a pearl
To save in a lifetime

And to be crushed
For the sake of the pearl

Only. You were the pearl
And I a nothingness,

A shadow of maybes
And invalids. The scene

Would end someday,
We both knew,

But kept going and
Going still till there

Was no eternity
Left to be creased

By our soft hands
Holding each other

Though they were not
Enough to keep us

Together, bound in a net
Along the surface of

These lands, seas and skies,
Under the stars, which are

Bound to stay apart like
We did and do graciously.

***

Ayşe Tekşen lives in Ankara, Turkey where she works as a research assistant at the Department of Foreign Language Education, Middle East Technical University. Her work has been included in Gravel, After the Pause, The Write Launch, Uut Poetry, The Fiction Pool, What Rough Beast, Scarlet Leaf Review, Seshat, Neologism Poetry Journal, Anapest, Red Weather, Ohio Edit, SWWIM Every Day, The Paragon Journal, Arcturus, Constellations, the Same, The Mystic Blue Review, Jaffat El Aqlam, Brickplight, Willow, Fearsome Critters, Susan, The Broke Bohemian, The Remembered Arts Journal, Terror House Magazine, Shoe Music Press, Havik: Las Positas College Anthology, Deep Overstock, Lavender Review, Voice of Eve, Dash, The Courtship of Winds, Mizmor Anthology, Mojave Heart Review, NōD Magazine, and Sincerely. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Straylight, Toyon Literary Magazine, Headway Quarterly, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Tipton Poetry Journal.