Creative Writing Project Part 2

Portrait of a Turkish Flower

Part I: Father and Son

When you were a boy in Turkiye, your father would pick you up, his great hands embracing yours, still young. He would wrap his fingers securely around your wrists and begin his tumultuous cycle, spinning in circles like a carousel, the world a blur surrounding you with his laughing face the only clarity before you.

“You,” your father encouraged, “are you going to fly someday.” You believed him.

Those days were always sunny and warm. Because you lived close to the sea, you reveled in being able to run free, shoeless and shirtless, basking in the warmth, soil clinging to the soles of your feet. Your gaze never turned away from the clouds.

As you grew older and nobler, your line of sight shifted from the sky to the sea, and you grew quiet, inquisitive. When your father noticed, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I want to sail.”

He stood beside you, his hand lightly squeezing your shoulder, overlooking the cerulean waves. “Then you will sail,” he affirmed.

He never twirled you around again, and you were perfectly fine with that.

Part II: Plumeria

When you were fifteen, your parents moved you to California and you had to put your shoes back on. Even though you lived within walking distance of the Pacific, the steaming asphalt scalded your feet and the water was dirty and the guffawing of seagulls frustrated you.

Once, you dared to lay your head to the ground to listen for a healthy, thrumming heartbeat below the surface. You began to notice how your soft breathing rustled the blades of grass, and you blew harder and they rocked like palm trees in a hurricane. For a moment, you were omnipotent, ferocious.

But then you closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and listened. Nothing. The rush of traffic and the chattering away of people on cell phones was all that reverberated in your ears. Everything was ragged and uneven and ugly.

“California is a death trap—an asthma attack!” you thundered, and you ripped a clump of grass out with your first and sobbed until you were hoarse.

But one day, after you had become accustomed to the static and monochromatic concrete city, you witnessed a miracle. From the withering palm bush in your front yard, a dying creature you never deemed revivable, bloomed a kaleidoscope plumeria, the most beautiful flower you had ever seen—and you realized there was still Hope.

Part III: Kissed by the Sun

Your father used to pluck dandelions and rub them under your chin. Once, as he performed this ritual, as the petal’s playful nipping teeth tickled your neck, a grin (usually the reflection of sunlight on the moon) broke across your face like a sunrise (this is the real thing). His eyes softened as he smiled and inquired,

“Do you love her, son?”

to which you responded, “I love the idea of her.”

You must have lived outside that summer because your hair is sun-bleached, your head the embodiment of the laughter of summer. Head held high, you tilt your chin towards the lens of the camera as if to say, “I do not fear today or tomorrow.” The sun cups your cheek in his strong hands, humming congratulations.

Your father took you Home that summer, and the caress of Turkish sunshine on your skin was the same as in California.

Part IV: Rebirth of the Phoenix

Poised solitary, barefoot on the seaside cliff, you gazed toward the horizon where sky meets sea. You plucked a wish flower from the ground and proclaimed, “My only real motivation in life is that everything has the potential to be beautiful,” before a tempest rushed from your lips, scattering the feather-fingered seeds like newborn spiders parachuting into the world.

Part V: Tenthousand Princes

Standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to turn green, you suddenly panicked, throwing you hand up to your mouth, eyes darting back and forth suspiciously. It was too late, though. You had coughed and a monarch had escaped from your lips and fluttered away. I had seen it. “What just happened?” I asked, eyebrows arching, but you protested,

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” coyly wiggling your way out of the predicament.

But I understand. I know what you are composed of:

Ten thousand butterflies. Ten thousand princes of the earth and sun. Each unique. Each distinct from his brothers, but all singing joyously the same philosophy:

“The Earth is my Mother, the Sky is my Father.”

But the light turned green before I could say anything more, and you disappeared smiling into the crowds of phone-babblers and chit-chatters.