---

Worlds

by Ayşe Tekşen


 
He withdrew a world 
From within me 
And put another--
Spacious and uncontainable.
No, I am not cross, no! 
For flowers grew then,
And no more I am 
That old rag of bones
But a garden of the rarest 
And the cruelest vegetation.
Now when I close my eyes, 
I dream in colors instead of shapes--
Solid and outgrown and tedious. 
Everywhere there is color,
And I am a color, too.
The liveliest of them all.
Because I am alive. 
And I am a life.
I am life.
 

​​

​

---

Ayşe Tekşen lives in Ankara, Turkey where she works as a research assistant at the Department of Foreign Language Education, Middle East Technical University. Her work has been included in Gravel, After the Pause, The Write Launch, Uut Poetry, The Fiction Pool, What Rough Beast, Scarlet Leaf Review, Seshat, Neologism Poetry Journal, Anapest, Red Weather, Ohio Edit, SWWIM Every Day, The Paragon Journal, Arcturus, Constellations, the Same, The Mystic Blue Review, Jaffat El Aqlam, Brickplight, Willow, Fearsome Critters, Susan, The Broke Bohemian, The Remembered Arts Journal, Terror House Magazine, Shoe Music Press, Havik: Las Positas College Anthology, Deep Overstock, Lavender Review, Voice of Eve, Dash, The Courtship of Winds, Mizmor Anthology, Mojave Heart Review, NōD Magazine, and Sincerely. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Straylight, Toyon Literary Magazine, Headway Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Rabid Oak