Taking up space in small pools

Lucy Holme

“…no one recognises the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it”
— Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

You suggested Istanbul because it sat between two worlds.
It’s easy to fake an interest in textiles and art,
but who doesn’t love a city on the cusp?
So you arrived, drew strength from the Bosphorus strait.
Haggled for kilim rugs to furnish an apartment you didn’t yet own.
Sought solace in the city’s orange fingered glow
bartered with locals for china gorgons and polished opals,
bummed cigarettes from strangers.
You took an open-topped bus to the basilica,
couldn’t bring yourself to gaze at the twin medusa heads
under a vaulted ceiling of fire and looted marble.
To picture their upside-down faces stuck deep underwater
and count the tiny bubbles which escaped like poor excuses.
What if they blinked and you didn’t turn to stone?
What then? Lose faith in sea witches, too?
You loved the cast iron turbines, behemoths of the age—
questioned why you never became an engineer,
days measured by what you could fix instead of break.
No angle left for complacency. With her young and vital,
fluffy hair shorn close, radio burns upon her breast.
So livid in her soft skin it made you wince.
You learned then that bodies were real.
Together you held up jewels to the midday sun
like experts in gemstone refraction
when some clarity would have been the deal.
And you wanted to level with her;
You only searched for a rooftop bar, a rest from your busy life.
You didn’t think it was the end.
But it was a matter of fortuity, a mini-break timed by design
to prise free slammed-shut secrets under the byzantine skyline.
See her forever reflected in chandelier glass,
legs outstretched on the cobalt tiled terrace
as she sipped sweet mint tea
and laughed.

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Originally from Kent in the UK, Lucy Holme has a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Language from Manchester University. She lives in Cork City with her husband and three small children. In May of 2020, she was shortlisted for the Ó Bhéal International Five Words Poetry Competition 2020 and five poems were featured in Poethead. She has poems recently published in Porridge, La Piccioletta Barca and Burnt Breakfast magazines, and forthcoming in Tether’s End and Dreich.

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