As my shattered emotions were buried deep in a graveyard far beneath the earth, the sunset of love sealed my eyes in their sockets. Sweat dripped from my hairline to my temples, and a wave of heat washed over my entire body from head to toe. Time didn't flow linearly in that moment; it fractured along with my emotions, scattering across past and future alike. My frozen facial expression, the ringing in my ears, my trembling fingers, and the cold phone in my hand… As I stared at the screen, tears started to spill uncontrollably from my eyes. They had stopped clinging to my tear glands altogether. Before I even realized what I was doing, the only thing I remembered was throwing the phone in my hand so hard to the ground that it made a loud crash.
The phone landed face down, and people around started staring blankly.
Poyraz looked down at the fallen phone and then at me, but then averted his eyes from mine, as if he couldn't decide what to do. The words were so knotted in my throat that he seemed to feel it too and stayed silent. My heart was screaming that I had been cheated on, deceived, and that whatever this connection with that person named Selin was, it was more than a professional exchange. And he… he didn't even bother to say "no" or deny it. He just kept staring at the phone on the ground.
Maybe just one word from him could've extinguished the fire burning on my lips, could've let me breathe—but he didn't say a thing.
"Don't you have anything to say?" I asked, my voice cracked and hoarse, as the wind tossed my hair. "Are you really this vile? Is that it? I could accept so many things… but are you really this despicable, Poyraz? This heartless?"
He finally took his eyes off the ground, bent down, and picked up his phone, looking at the cracked screen. With furrowed brows, he muttered, "What could be more natural than saving someone by their name?" But for the first time, the veil on his face lifted, and his expression seemed filled with genuine pain.
Taking advantage of the short distance between us, I grabbed him by the collar and shook him, shouting, "You disgusting bastard!" He didn't resist. He just let me. That made my chest tighten even more. "Not one word from you, you lowlife piece of trash? Not one damn word?"
My hands slipped weakly from his collar. "I hope you feel everything you made me feel… Maybe," I said as my voice began to fade, "Maybe I'll be the one to make you feel it, Poyraz. Things your mind couldn't even fathom. God knows what you said to her? What you talked about? How many times you cheated on me?"
He looked at my hands falling to his chest. Still silent.
The more he stayed silent, the more I wanted to destroy everything in my path.
And he was deathly silent.
In a trance-like state, I mumbled, "This time will be different." My head was spinning, my vision darkened. Sounds felt like the final echoes lingering in the ears of the dead. As the images around me blurred, my knees gave out and all the strength in my body slowly poured into the ground. I couldn't hold myself up anymore. "Don't faint," I whispered. "Don't faint."
But it was too late to warn myself.
I felt Poyraz coming toward me.
The touch of his hands on my back— even in that semi-conscious state— felt more than a wound.
My body collapsed into the dull presence of his being, as if left stranded in a field of wreckage. My soul was in flames. Everything ached.
With the distant sound of Poyraz shouting, everything turned darker still.
"Sinem!"
***
His presence pressed against my eyes like the final dream a flower sees before it dies; beneath a pale light. A grassy field filled with ivy, roses, chirping birds— and the warm air seeping into the mountain cabin overwhelmed me. I was resting against his chest. One fold of the white blanket draped over the armchair by the window was in my hand, the other in Poyraz's. The entire world had been left behind that closed door. The moment I lived with him was in flow, and slow.
Suddenly, he woke up. His phone rang. He turned the screen away from me and sat up.
"Who is it?" I asked, as the sunlight began to burn my skin like fire. The fold of the blanket was trapped between my fingers.
"A business meeting…" he said coldly.
He stood. "Who?" I asked, holding onto his arm. "Who was it?"
Leaving my questions behind the door, he replied, "Work," and didn't answer.
"It's a woman, isn't it?" I asked with a bitter smile on my face.
He wasn't listening.
"It's a woman, isn't it? There's a woman in your life!"
"This phone rang before too, Poyraz!"
"How many times now?"
"How many times have you lied to me?"
With every scream, my voice came out as a whistle shaped by the air left in my lungs, and the entire world was going dark.
No matter how loud I shouted, Poyraz wasn't hearing me.
***
It was as if everything kept starting over and over again, moment after moment.
Poyraz was holding me tightly.
The scent of his cologne had settled on me like a lifelong sorrow.
"Don't let go of me," I whispered, locking my arms around his back.
The tighter I held him, the more his arms slipped down from my back.
"I promise," he said slowly.
"Keep your promise," I said with a faint smile.
I looked up—our eyes met.
Then his arms dropped.
With every second I looked at him, he began to take one step away from me.
Our gaze broke. Shadows of mist crept between us.
With a sharp ache in my stomach, I said, "Poyraz… don't go."
The chandelier above came crashing down between us.
I crawled across the floor.
As the shards sliced my fingertips and nails, my wrist was left covered in blood.
Poyraz disappeared into the mist.
Once again…
***
"Mom, can you come home early tonight? Dad really misses you," I said, reminding her of my father sitting in his wheelchair.
My mother stopped applying her lipstick. For a moment, she looked at me with furrowed brows. "I'm sick of both your father and you! You always want something! Always needy, always whining!" she snapped angrily. She capped her lipstick with a harsh click. Her face now wore a furious, arrogant, and weary expression. "I'm going to end it with that man!"
I couldn't swallow—I couldn't even breathe.
"Get that through your head! Don't I deserve a life of my own? I'm tired of taking care of you two... I have a life too..." She waved her index finger in front of my face, robbing me of my soul.
I had always needed her love.
My father shared the same fate as I did.
It hurt.
He loved my mother so much—and loved himself so little—that the days he spent in that wheelchair wound around his waist like a snake.
No one loved him.
The tears in my eyes had frozen. My jaw clenched, and my mother's image began to blur before my eyes.
***
"Dad," I said, turning to the man sitting in his wheelchair, staring out the window. As I took a few steps closer, he remained still, unresponsive. I held a bowl of fruit in my hands. Slowly, I placed it on the small table beside his bed. "I love you so much..."
Maybe he didn't turn around so I wouldn't see how helpless he looked.
But the longer he stayed turned away, the smaller I became with every passing second.
"I love you..." I repeated, but he said nothing.
Love, for me, was like a handful of dead soil thrown over me every time I tried to love.
***
My eyes opened halfway, starting to sense the soulless atmosphere of the room. The millions of recurring dreams spinning in my head slowly withdrew, exhausted. My mind didn't get a moment's rest—my brain rewound everything in reverse. Among all the dreams I'd had, after the ones with Poyraz and the ones that ended with my father's tears, the name "Selin" always appeared at the end. I frowned and looked at the shadow before me. It hadn't taken a clear shape yet, but I had already started screaming."Go away!"
"Sinem, my beautiful one!"
"Go," I was thrashing about—hitting my arms, legs, and head against the bed, yelling, "Go!"
"Go, I'm begging you, go Poyraz! Go! Go, Poyraz, go! Go..." My voice turned into sobs, and I started crying deeply. When I screamed, "GO!" a gentle hand wrapped around my left hand. The moment Asya's face became clear in front of me, I seemed to calm down a little. Though the tears in my eyes briefly paused, the pain in my soul was still burning my chest."Don't let him come," I started pleading.
Asya bent down in front of me, "Okay, my darling," she said. "He won't come, I promise."
"Asya, don't let him come," I said, squeezing my wet eyes shut.
As if she could stop him from coming.
Every second I chose Poyraz—it didn't feel like my decision.
"Please don't let him come..." I was practically begging.
"Oh God, please don't let him come!" I prayed out loud, over and over. "I'm begging you, God, please make him go away!" I was groaning like a mortally wounded patient. Asya whispered, "It's over, sweetheart. It's over..." But none of her words were enough to soothe me.
My heart was a place of ruin.
I don't know how many prayers I mumbled.
I don't know how much pain I endured.
But finally, the door opened.
The sharp sound of the door echoed in my ears.
The hallway noises fluttered through my chest like wings.
A hurried grip... a shadow standing at the door, looking at me.
A silhouette—the embodiment of pain.
My lips froze.
In my chest, rage, hatred, and resentment boiled.
It was the shadow of my curse.