a note, a blush, a wing
When I was small, I used to steal from big malls. I would steal erasers with factory smells, pencils embedded with glittering horses, and fluffy pink feathered pen ends. When my mum first found out I stole, she cried and cried and said there was shame on me.
When I grew up I fell in love with a man that stole chicken wings and hid them under his armpit. The dead meat kept on sliding inside his shirt and I kept on laughing. We escaped the cashiers fast and breathed the cold Ankara air in. The sky was a cheeky orange.
On my wedding day, all things started well. In the evening, I made off with my ring. Something wasn’t right I thought, if I am plotting at stealing from myself. The air was inverted, no longer light. In the velvet cut of the ring box I left an apology: do not trust a child with me, though I blush under your skin.
When I am old, I will look back at my days and I will whimper. Like my mum I will cry and cry and think there is shame on me. The pink fluffy feathers will sway on the dream catcher. But I am not old yet. Men are fish in a pond, the ring bought me a holiday, I still laugh when I am thieving.
But the chicken wings in the frying pan, they won’t stop being melancholy.
Defne Cizakca was born in Cyprus and grew up in Turkey. Presently she travels between Glasgow and Istanbul, writing a novel about the end of the Ottoman Empire. She loves benches under oak trees and making up acknowledgements. She would like to live in the service of pretty things.
