Eda Gunaydin

lorjournal,

Waterloo

Eda Gunaydin

You wake me up by splashing icy water from a carton
          — which is fluoride-free — over me.
You say: it’s reiki.
          I think it’s more like when you introduced me to your leader/
lawsuit, yours and the congregation’s
fervent in a lavender room
twelve thousand kilometres from your home, where now
          I’d rather be somewhere else.

My favourite article of faith is
when a rape is a rape.

I think about the fact that you might have delivered me to this
Jim Jones David Koresh Count Chocula looking fuck
          and praying not to hold a grudge.

I sleep in corpse pose, above the covers.
Dwell in the chain reaction of men who have ruined our life,
and welts blossom up and down your arms.

It’s important not to let these things slide.
Otherwise, anything could be a precedent
set in the space between the blinking of my eye
and the wetting of my lips,
as I go to say
          I’m sorry
          I can’t deliver you.
I brought some food.

I know you haven’t left bed today
because you have the same pillow creases
that run down my spine, down
          my cheeks
that would stay there for weeks
if I didn’t need to deliver you
an it’s okay, while I think about trying
          to be a tidal wave instead of a leaking tap
trying to secrete enough sabır ya sabır
to fill you for good
          while you sail east with a hole in your hull.

The dry sponge that is your tongue resurges.
          It’s my fault. I’m a hangdog, shame-faced anchor of
Look at me, look at me, I am here and I won’t leave you.
It is a lie. One of many I tell like
          No, you don’t sound crazy
               I’m just trying to listen to you.

You register me as if I am speaking over a conversation
that you prefer to my recriminations and
conspiracies — plots hatched with the people running tests on your brain
          for the CIA.

Visit you on the M20
ride the bus silently amid the brackish pack
hot compress of Sydney bodies.

Wish I showered. Had the energy to have showers.

Tap off the Opal card, down the pavement past
the guy on his bike for Foodora or Deliveroo,
or whatever it is, I don’t know

          what can I deliver you

Eda Gunaydin is a 24 year-old Turkish-Australian memoirist born and raised in Western Sydney. She is interested in class and intergenerational trauma, and has appeared in publications including Meanjin, The Lifted Brow and Voiceworks. She is the current recipient of the Dinny O’Hearn Fellowship.