Salty

We liked each other out of mockery:

A fact which, however distant, preserved

In our balance a delicate sort of spite.

We were always bickering 

To eliminate the threat of a silence, 

Under whose gaze we might both fall naked:

Ichorous and wrong. It was our habit

To brush hands; a ritual - peculiar and rapid,

We would never acknowledge. The sweet

Dew of this avoidance stained the both of us

Raintime blue. The catch was that this blue

Lingered on, long after you were gone.

I confess I had never known a gaze to be

Warm as yours, though serrated and always

Ever-so-slightly ever-too-long

(Feeling you want to peel me away

And lay me, breast-bare and kicking, under 

The microscope and pluck all the wit

Out forever). Our togetherness

Was unwarranted; our illusion of womanliness,

Wishbone-thin. The longer I borrowed

You, the greater the wrong. 

The last time, we hugged without shame, 

Your ribs crushed against mine, 

Palms flat on my back; a slow heart

Sizzling in 3/4. 

Please tell us something more about yourself and the poem:

I'm Ela Begüm Kumcuoğlu, a Turkish student living in London who enjoys moving around through ballet and karate! In my more disorganised time, I visit the comedy club and am insufferable about horror movies. Because I usually write science-fiction, my poems orbit around a word. The focus on salt came from a reflection from my journal; that memory is like revisiting something that's been pickled, in that's it's shrunk and now wears a different flavour. Maybe a simpler flavour is that I drew on a couple relationships I'm salty about to write this. 

Ela Begum Kumcuoğlu is a sixth student living in London, hoping to read history at university. She enjoys writing science-fiction and nature poetry in her spare time and has recently become fond of a character called Gilly (shortened from Virgil). She also enjoys ballet, karate, and nights at the comedy club. Recent publications include Moonday Magazine, Foyle Young Poets, the Keats-Shelley Young Romantics Prize, the Rome Review and Boats Against the Current.