Aurora

by Selen Ozturk

This story already wondering what counts as one—maybe: I tell it and you’ll want to?

Wrote. Wrote about that. There are things this story can’t know just because one didn’t write them down, not because one can’t know. 

Chicken thighs, skin-on, 1 pound; slightly over alright.

The female libido doesn’t peak until thirty-five at the earliest.
 

Hot bread and a few big wax potatoes.

This story really wondering how it knows what to tell and what not and how much and in what order.

Out of every hundred people, one-tenth are fully mute, whether born so or for any reason having become. (I wrote.)

It’s far easier alone to pleasure oneself very well, but it’s far less pleasurable.

Misspeak, memory, for any reason having become.

As a child, in a parking garage, I yelled for my dad and when the cold air echoed “Dad?” I froze through my heels until I imagined it was only someone else, listening to me and replying.

Crowds kill echoes. Shall I just stand off to the side?

Even mute crowds. A while ago I looked up why and wrote it elsewhere, thinking it’d be perfect here. I remember, more or less: Sound hits people too soft to refract (echo). 

This is why churches, for instance, sound deader the more filled they are, and more alive the emptier. But even then there must be something, listening and replying.

The male libido, generally eighteen. 

So what part still struggles not to mute?

Painful to eat fast as one would like now. (The sludge has already risen to my neck at twenty-five.)

All this unknown if not written. Ate. See?

But facts aren’t atoms, each one in theory accountable. Poo break. Flushed twice and then some.

Aren’t they?

When I flushed, the sun stuck pink rays across my toilet seat. The dark gray dust that’d clumped in my wet spatters melted amber in the light holding over my Kohler brand toilet seat.

Could it’ve been something I ate?

But I ate normal things. Chicken, bread. Some things normal for me aren’t for everyone, of course. But if bread isn’t normal, why isn’t diarrhea?

To defend myself against this: I’ve never, not once, eaten Wonder Bread. But that it’s normal as anything can possibly be in my life or anyone’s—nothing can be clearer. 

Overkill even to write it, almost.

Over telling many little things, I’d rather tell a big thing once: This story’s wondering what it’s supposed to solve, the afterlife or this unmuting.

I’d do that and wait.