Jooon
Joooon.
Hepsi sana verecem.
I might be naive when I say we should hold onto this but why is it so wrong to want a sand timer love when it looks like our bodies papier mached to one another.
Canım. Canım. Canım benim.
I am impatient with improbability. All I know is right now I collect your happiness on my lips and it makes me more than smile.
Bokhoramet.
I know you like it when I say that, so I’ll be careful with my pronunciation.
Pull your head into my chest and tuck your hair behind your ears like a promise.
I want to kiss you in the fields of my childhood. We are blades of wheat hanging onto the ground.
Tambourine
I hope you keep me in the nook at the base of your spine when you leave,
or even better, folded and tucked under your fingernails.
Our honesty with the dirt.
This way every time you scratch you will be reminded of us.
Not that we are an itch. I would describe you more like a planet and me more like a ring.
When the Iranian border force took your passport when you went home,
I spent hours shaking like a tambourine, unable to sleep.
I wonder if my housemates heard me, clattering against the duvet.
It was selfish of me, thinking about the softness of your shoulder under my cheek and how I needed that.
I will send you letters, as if that can replace holding your smile between my palms and the feel of our bodies wrapped naked under a duvet.
I will send you letters, joonam, in a world where a piece of paper can cross borders, but people can’t.
Yas Necati is a writer and performance poet based in London. They explore themes of queer and trans identity, migrant identity, mental health, recovery, community and resistance in their writing. They are part of London Queer Writers, and run a writing group for people of colour. When they are not immersed in poetry, they campaign on gender-based and queer based-rights, run workshops on self care, and occasionally perform as their drag act alter-ego, Turkish pop star Tarkan.