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Night-song

Lara Arikan

I see you sleeping in a dark room as you would sleep alone,

unaware that you are yours, and I am yours as well.

Colors spark outside, proudly announcing the existence

of things no longer beautiful. They boil the thin,

iridescent pool-water of the darkness, which I hold cupped

in my small hands. Your form trembles, a dark and heavy

figure on the skin-warm bed. If I could move my body,

it would be to mime your rising and falling, the wet breath

of your sleep. But in my palms is the oil of the night,

glaring red and gold in the sun that creeps

hotly and slowly onto your face. Gradually you are growing

eyes and arms and legs, turned away from the morning,

squinting at your own fingers. You see of me nothing,

only a shadow, plainer and paler as the day comes,

and wake unaware that you are yours, as is the water

of my hands.

Lara Arikan is an Ankara-based poet and electronic musician. Her poems have appeared in Typishly, Cordite Poetry Review, Medusa's Laugh Press's third microtext anthology, and in di-verse-city 2018, the youth anthology of the Austin International Poetry Festival. Bilkent University's weekly newspaper Bilkent News holds two years of her opinions. When alone she collects dead flowers in the low hills.

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