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 nose breathes simit fresh from ovens,
my skin drinks İstanbul’s twilight—
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.