{"id":66827,"date":"2025-05-05T07:30:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T05:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/?p=66827"},"modified":"2026-03-17T12:52:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:52:57","slug":"youve-been-searching-for-a-very-long-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/youve-been-searching-for-a-very-long-time\/","title":{"rendered":"you\u2019ve been searching for a very long time"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

for a very long time, i\u2019ve wanted to write a text about you\u2014
\n<\/em>one you will never read,
\neven though we\u2019re only separated by a single wall,
\na wall through which everything can be heard:
\n<\/em>the moaning during sex with various bodies\u2014yours very quiet, and mine, to your
\ndismay, far too loud\u2014 or the discreet coughing after insomnia escapades,
\nor the laughter during phone calls with those who aren\u2019t here anymore,
\n<\/em>or the breathing after a nightmare and the light shining through the crack of the door
\n<\/em>we never open.
\nthese walls are thin like paper, you once said.
\nwe don\u2019t write on them, the walls\u2014
\n<\/em>we have no shared paper,
\nonly the co-existence of our diaries
\n<\/em>in our own rooms
\nor fortresses.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

you’ve been searching<\/strong>
\nfor a very long time<\/strong><\/p>\n

for something that would have made it all worth it.
\nLike in your weekly therapy session,
\nwhere you talk about other people\u2019s traumas,
\nyou search for your reason, your excuse to fail.
\nyou\u2019re allowed to fail too, your therapist tells you,
\nshe\u2019s something like your smuggler, the one you pay\u2014
\nbut you have to cross the border yourself.<\/em><\/p>\n

or in my diary, which you read, you search between the lines
\nfor my words you didn\u2019t listen to closely enough,
\nbecause you stopped really being present.<\/p>\n

or on the dance floor, which is really just the last squat left in the city,
\nthere you search for your body,
\nthe one you only feel when you\u2019re pressed against a wall
\nby a He who seeks something like love\u2014
\nor maybe just revenge between your lips and lips [\u2026]<\/p>\n

or in the garden, where you keep chickens and water tomato plants,
\nand let the scrubs grow wild between aloe vera and weeds,
\nin the cycle of photosynthesis and compost and cosmos,
\nof reincarnation and menstrual cycles, of seasons and seeds\u2014
\nthere you search for energy transformation,
\nfor the constant within the change, the fertility of decay,
\nfor something
\nthat stays.<\/p>\n

Or in the sea, whose horizon always says Turkey
\n(this shithole of Erdogan and (over-)exploitation and oppression and police violence
\nand genocide)
\nand never freedom,
\nyou search for God or the lost ones who now only
\nappear to you as waves. ripple. shadows.<\/p>\n

when the hurt days begin again,
\n<\/strong>for reasons that are so obviously there
\nmerely ignored and buried on other days,
\nyou sneak,
\nsurrounded by 5 million meters of of walls and curbs,
\nyou tiptoe where heads hit the ground
\nwith your personal Fortress Europe, your barbed wire,
\nyour permanent state of alarm,
\nthrough the hallway through the hallway,
\ngazing down as our eyes meet
\n(like all people in mourning).
\nin the kitchen, when you take the coffee off the stove
\nbefore I let it boil over and burn again,
\nyou ask about my plans for the day and I answer and ask back,
\nas if it had any relevance what either of us is doing today,
\nas if we weren\u2019t just melting pieces of insignificance.
\non some of those mornings, the skin under your eyes is red
\nlike you cried again (and I didn\u2019t hear it),
\nbut maybe it\u2019s just another allergic reaction to something unknown.
\nnassim\u2019s eyes are always red,
\nnassim\u2019s grief is frozen in blood-etched marks
\nleft behind by an overflow of tears.<\/p>\n

other times, when we run into each other in the kitchen\u2014
\nto say we \u201cmeet\u201d or \u201csee\u201d each other would be too much\u2014
\nyou squat for more than a while
\nin front of the broken freezer
\nas if it were a grave
\nthat cannot be closed.
\nwhen you look up from your crouch,
\nyour pupils are still dilated,
\nholding the black night you’ve absorbed
\nand clearly hidden,
\nbecause you never went to sleep.
\nthose are the nights when you take ecstasy or speed or MDMA,
\nsometimes even coke\u2014of all things, coke\u2014
\nwith people who couldn\u2019t be further from you.
\nyou once said you take drugs to get lost in your own confusion
\nwithout having to feel the pain.
\nfor instance, you think of H. or M. or I.
\nor your sister\u2019s baby that died before it could live.
\non some dawns, before morning,
\nbefore the day of the week of the winter can even begin,
\nI sometimes see you going through the gate,
\noutside\u2014wherever that may be for you.<\/p>\n

sometimes we actually meet in the bathroom too.
\nwhen you burst in while I\u2019m sinking into my reflection
\nand the disgust of this society, for example\u2014
\nand then you do something absurd next to me
\nlike take a piss and use toilet paper and flush
\nand wash your hands
\nwithout sinking into your reflection and the disgust of this society.
\nnext to the toilet hangs a photo of you and her and them
\nand another person who used to be here,
\nand now only watches us poop in the form of this one-dimensional photo.
\nthe bathroom is a place of measuring and missing,
\nand your collectivized shame,
\nwhich you try to wash off in the shower,
\nsticks to the disposable razor from the warehouse.
\nand sometimes it gets to me too,
\nwhen I use it after you,
\nand I cut myself on it\u2014
\nand a month later, when the blood has long since seeped away,
\nyou ask me about the scars on my skin
\nafter sunday egg breakfast.<\/p>\n

and you always find
\n<\/strong>your reasons to keep going and going and going and staying\u2014because of people.
\neven though they all eventually leave,
\nbecause this place is full of piss and cockroaches everywhere
\nand shipwrecks and selective ports and murder,
\nand this sun is a matrix.
\nand then you\u2019re alone again, with the dog and the chickens and your weight.
\nfallacies for burdens\u2014
\nhow much more can you carry before the ground opens up
\nbecause you\u2019re too heavy, you sometimes ask yourself.
\nand the whispering voice,
\nwith which you step into the boxing ring every Monday and Wednesday and Friday,
\nanswers you:
\nyou deserve to go under because your privilege is a crime.
\n<\/em>because you can liberate others by sacrificing yourself, can\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

and you lose
\n<\/strong>in all the days and nights and years you\u2019ve already been searching
\nfor something that would have made it all worth it,
\non this island \/ in Izmir \/ in Subotica \/ the world wide web
\n(which you\u2019re actually trying to boycott),
\nnever the control over yourself\u2014
\nonly the access to yourself
\nor the closeness to others,
\nuntil one day\u2014
\nwhen only they or He or I are still leaving,
\nand no one holds you together here anymore,
\nthe framework of symptom-fighting collapses
\nand you lie alone in this boxing ring
\nwith the ruins of causes and wrong turns and abstractions
\nand the monopoly on violence,
\nbrick by brick,
\nwall by wall,
\nuntil Fortress Europe
\nfalls\u2026<\/p>\n

then I hope
\n<\/strong>you find the glue in the second-to-last drawer
\nin the hallway of our house,
\nthe one I left there for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

for a very long time, i\u2019ve wanted to write a text about you\u2014 one you will never read, even though we\u2019re only separated by a single wall, a wall through…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2975,"featured_media":66908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7048],"tags":[8354,8350,8353,8351,8352,8349],"coauthors":[7044],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nyou\u2019ve been searching<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"you've been searching is a poem by Ria Mikus about linving on the border, 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