A Heart Split Across Hemispheres

Blue, folded like silk
beneath a sky drawn thin
towards Rangitoto’s slumbering form.
From my perch, high on Hobson’s curve,
Mission Bay, through a crescent of light, unfolds.
Pohutukawa dipping crimson
into the tide’s gentle, insistent rhyme.
Boats loll tethered dreams.

Sudden—the air shifts
Not the salt-tang of the Tasman,
but the ancient breath of the Bosphorus,
Tick with gull-screech —"balık ekmek!"
Across straits I cannot see.
Then—light turns alchemist,
gilding the far shore...
And there, Bebek!
Solid. Undeniable.
A confection of marble poised above the waves,
Where caïques cut silent paths.

My eyes: now painters of ghosts,
stroke Galata Tower onto morning,
wash Maiden’s Tower into blue.
While my skin bathes in İstanbul’s twilight,
I breathe simit fresh from ovens—
that familiar, hollow sweetness.

Home?
Not a pin on any map,
Nor just çay steaming in thin glass.
It’s this:
The angle where hill meets water
The way light falls
on shores that whisper to your bones first,
a word older than language.

Two bays. One mirror.
Reflecting a heart stretched taut
Trembles with love,
on this homesick sea.