POETRY · TRANSLATED FROM THE TURKISH

Anatomy of Silence

— I. Memory of the Wound —

My wounds were mended
by my silence,
my capillaries
became a home for scars.
I did not bow my head
before my battles.
I smiled,
and the sun wept before me.
Then I became silent,
so that the forgotten footsteps
could echo
within me.
The voices of children,
the self I had forgotten,
returned like distant shadows.
Every wound
was a letter,
every letter
a heartbeat.
I am a sentence
written upon my own skin,
still unfinished.


— II. The Music of the Fracture —

Something broke inside me.
Its sound
never reached the outside.
Perhaps every fracture
matures
within its own silence.
I am a breath
left behind the glass,
a window mistaking
tears for vapor.
No one heard it.
Sometimes
even I did not hear
the echo of my heart
when it struck against itself.
The wind passed through.
The emptiness within me
found a little voice.
At that moment I understood
that breaking apart
is also a music
for those who can hear.
I heard it.
Like a thin ache
on the silent strings
of a violin,
in the sigh
of a woman,
in the trembling voice
of a child
saying mother.
Yes, I broke.
But at the edge of the fracture
there is still light.
That light
is more real
than all the songs.


— III. Ashes in the Mirror —

One morning,
I looked into the mirror.
There were the ashes
of an old fire
upon my face.
Time is a master
at leaving traces,
as if each day
it erased and rewrote me.
Behind my eyes
a stranger was wandering.
Someone familiar,
yet someone
whose name I had forgotten.
"Is this me?" I asked.
My voice
could not pass
to the other side of the glass.
Everything I once believed in
stood within me
like a silent layer of ash.
I burned with the ashes,
yet I have not gone out.
Beneath the ashes
a warmth still remains.
Perhaps hope
is this silent,
this stubborn.
The mirror remained silent.
I remained silent.
In that silence,
I recognized myself again.
When I look back
at the past,
I do not cry.
I only smile a little,
like touching
a place that has burned
with tenderness.


— IV. The Tears of the Sun —

In the quietest place
of the night,
I heard a voice.
Perhaps it was me,
perhaps
the breath of morning.
The sky was heavy.
A line appeared
on the horizon.
The sun was rising
with tears.
There was a warmth
in those tears,
so familiar,
so human.
I cried too.
This time,
not from pain.
My tears were like
the first rain
falling upon the earth,
carrying the hope
of a new sprout.
For a moment,
a light passed
through my heart.
My wounds
turned into pale rose petals
in that light
All my sorrows,
all my absences,
were pieces
of a melody.
The sun became silent.
I heard it.
I heard
that even light
can weep.
At that moment
I learned:
sometimes crying
is another way
of being born again.
B
About the Author Bedriye Korkankorkmaz Bingöl · Turkey

Bedriye Korkankorkmaz is a poet, novelist, and essayist from Turkey, and a member of the Turkish Writers' Union. Born in Bingöl in 1965, she is the author of several poetry collections, essay books, and novels, with work published widely in Turkish literary journals. These poems were translated from the Turkish.

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