Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

SŞeyma Koç

-It didn’t? Well, it ’s time it did.

From then on, the chair I was sitting in seemed too small to carry the burden inside me. I stood to leave, to follow the funeral procession to the graveyard.

* * *

A woman’s shadow falls on the half-open window of a yellow house with damp walls, where magnolia incense burns inside. The curtains part. A two-horse carriage passes the deserted houses where wild weeds grow on their soil roofs. On the corner, a sad orange- colored girl plays a harmonica. A young man with a hangover moves his tobacco-stained lips to say hello. At thirty-five, a golden flurry passes in front me. A broken man walks behind me, swearing without pity for beautiful things. Clouds walk in the sky. It starts drizzling. Growing circles of waves move over the surface of the lake. My feet sink into a bed of leaves. The broken man never stops talking.

-Land of the dead! Graveyard of the lonely!

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