Photo by Fernando Rodrigues on Unsplash
Mom groans and turns in her sleep. She mumbles some half-formed words in the cave of her mouth. Her mother tongue balloons out of her fish breath and dissipates into the gaping dark of the ceiling, where shadows used to scare me with their elongating, ever-changing shapes when I was a kid. Tonight, I wait in bed, suspended in the hush between dreams. When the time is right, the stars order me out of the room. I tiptoe down the hallway, toward Mom’s bedroom, unafraid of the dark, unafraid of her, and press my ear against the door, trying to catch clues of who she was.
A Turkish writer, Sarp Sozdinler’s fiction has appeared in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Trampset, Fractured Lit, Hobart, and Maudlin House, among other journals. You can find him online as @sarpsozdinler.
