Ece Ozkan

Ece Ozkan May 2020

I’ve missed watching you sleep
So peaceful,
So quite.
I’ve missed watching you sleep,
Even though it is actually on a screen,
Miles and miles away from me.
On a slow Monday, after work,
You’d take a nap and recalibrate.
It’s night time where I am,
It’s not fair but when your days is just starting,
My day is about to end.
I’ve missed watching you sleep,
On a couch far, far away.

Ece Ozkan Apr 2020

Home in a Name

Been an expat all my adult life,
It wouldn't be shocking to say that
I never knew where my home is.

There is the home of my family, my childhood memories,
There is the home I built around a job,
In a country far away from where I opened my eyes to this world.
Yet something was missing in both,
Not knowing what,
Till we met for the first time, at Dulles.

That was the first time we saw each other in flesh.
You hugged me so hard,
And held my hand,
Never to let go.
And I realized you were my home,
For the name you have, Ev, meaning "home" where I come from.

Dec 2019

Evan Stephens

Letter to E--

To E--,

The orange sky
at 9 pm
is thrown over
the streetlamps,
bursting the
starry seams.

It's like you're
here, sometimes,
on this couch
the color of
burnt grass,
looking back
past the gauze
into the
hinging face
of night.

In truth,
you're sleeping
at the crux
of two
continents,
in an
eight-hour wash.

Every night
violent dreams
find me out
& unsew me
a little bit.

But soon
my wing of sleep
will be clean again,
because you will
be returned to me.
The orange sky
at 9 pm will
stop revolting,
and the night
will again be
the sweetest
of burdens.

Always Yours,
E---

Ece Ozkan Nov 2019

What do I remember

What do I remember?
I remember the way you look,
When you are in deep sleep.
The way your lower lip falls down,
And your breath is even.
I remember when you are so focused on your game,
You won't even notice I'm watching you,
Closely.
I remember the sun beam falling onto the cat.
And how you adore her playing with
That grocery bag on the floor.

What do I remember?
I remember giving up on love,
For good,
After so many heartaches.
Then… out of the blue, I remember my heart
Beating again.
Maybe, this time. Maybe?
I remember seeing you for the first time,
At Dulles, on a warm May day.
Hugging me for life, bringing me to life.

What do I remember?
I remember you.
Me.
Smiling at each other.
And the thousands of miles is now just a number.

Nov 2019

Evan Stephens

Inscription

These words are
    your soldiers.
These poems are
    your armies.

Let them march
    to the drum of joy.
Let them march
    to the fife of sorrow.

They will always obey
    their general.

Nov 2019

Evan Stephens

Absence

While her plane taxied,
I had already entered a sort

of personal sarcaphogus,
built to contain the click

click click of this radiation -
errant atoms in caustic traces

throughout the salted air.
It's a mechanism, keeping

me sane in the face of
this sorrow of her exit -

I walk in dazes, and joy
falls away in strips

like bark from a sickly tree.
So I count the minutes of the days...

Ece Ozkan Aug 2019

Confessions of a Worrier

Things I can not say out loud,
The scary thoughts, vague assumptions, endless questions,
They get clogged in my throat.
Choking me, literally.
I wake up with a swollen throat,
Hard to talk,
Hard to swallow.
Will I be here after October?
Will I get to celebrate Halloween with you?
Thanksgiving? New Year's?
Then the throat gets worse.
Can't breath.
The idea of not being here with you,
I am choking.

Then I see you sitting next to me.
I reach out,
Tell you I am fading.
You run to the drugstore,
It's pouring,
But you sprint anyways.
When you come back,
It's not just the medicine that aids my inflamed throat,
And inflamed thoughts,
It's you.
Talking to you,
We let the worries disappear into thin air.
We turn the question marks into kisses.
As I take another sip of the warm liquid with painkillers,
The worrier in me fades away,
And I am finally breathing.